


An Attempt Was Made

by coolerthancats



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Dawn is bae and deserved so much better, F/M, Gaslighting, I wrote this for practice but you can read it if you want, Look I know I said Dagda's a bit of a jerk but no seriously this guy is the worst, Minor Violence, Sunny is immune to fall damage and no I don't know why, Writing Exercise, but let's be real who would not be seduced by a swordfight, magical mind control, near death by lizard, prose exercise, seduction via swordfighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2020-02-29 08:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolerthancats/pseuds/coolerthancats
Summary: Everything happens more or less as it did in the movie, except things have been rearranged to suit the author's particular preferences at the expense of everyone else's.Sugar Plum has a back story and a real name, Love Potions are treated with the terror and respect they deserve, Sunny is inexplicably immune to fall damage, and King Dagda is a bit more of a jerk.





	1. Marianne 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story and, in all honesty, it's more of an exercise in prose than a coherent narrative. I don't expect anyone to actually read this, but if you have somehow stumbled upon this clusterfuck, congratulations! Please feel free to critique my prose and general life choices in the comments.

Spring came to the Fairy Kingdom. Flowers bloomed, days grew longer, and anyone that valued their life stayed far from the eastern border. Empty rooms in the palace crowded and filled, as they had in previous springs, with eastern-dwelling subjects afraid of being seized by an overzealous collection crew. Father, busy presenting a show of control to his subjects, and the palace guards, engaged with the influx, had no time for a certain mischievous princess bent on chaos. Luckily, I was free. Anyone who valued their life could be trusted to stay away from the east, but valuing one’s life was a sensible thing to do, and so Dawn, my sister, would doubtless refuse on principle.

She was with Sunny, a scrappy little elf that she’d been friends with for the last few years. They were remarkably well matched: despite being only half her height, he somehow got into twice as much trouble. 

I watched carefully as they made their daring escape from the main hall of the palace. Sunny took cover in stone nooks and alcoves. He was tense, watchful, shoulders tight and fists clenched. He was completely invisible to any passing guards, not that they were really looking for him. 

Of course, if he  _ was  _ caught, he’d be trapped by his own cover. 

Dawn, ever-oblivious, strolled down the corridor, posture open and relaxed, smiling at passing guards and citizens. 

Upon reaching the front entryway the pair paused dramatically at the edge of the door, waited until the guards were distracted helping a luggage-laden elf, and bolted through, whooping and yelling at their victory.

The guards did not pursue them. 

I walked out after them. I nodded to the guards as I passed, careful not to lose sight of my sister. They didn’t stop me either, but that had never been in question.

Our home, the royal palace, was carved into a boulder in the center of the largest meadow in the kingdom. The only entrance was halfway up its massive face. For most elves, short and wingless as they were, that meant an arduous trek down countless stairways. For Sunny, it meant a leap into open air. Dawn caught him, lowered him to the ground, and they ran.

Sunny had to run hard to keep up with Dawn, who flew low and fast beneath tall flowers. They were trying not to be seen from above. Now that they had escaped the palace and its watch, there was only one reason they would try to be stealthy.

They knew I would be watching. They were trying to evade my notice. Luckily for me, consistent practice hadn’t helped them at all. They terrible at being stealthy.

Dawn’s large pink wings pushed against the stem of every flower she flew past, leaving an eminently noticeable trail. Sunny, despite his remarkable ability to keep up with a fairy flying full tilt, loudly gasped for air and occasionally shouted for Dawn to wait up. 

I beat my wings hard and pushed myself up into the air. I would be easy to spot from here.

“Dawn!” I yelled, looking anywhere but the obvious trail of jostling flowers. “Dawn, where are you?”

The motion below stilled for a moment, then sped up - beelining for the stream. Sunny yelled again, voice cracking.

I pretended not to see them. Or hear them. I drifted here and there, still shouting Dawn’s name, but stayed high enough that I could see where they went.

Dawn paused when she reached the stream. I watched through my peripherals as she picked up Sunny, zipped across the water, and back under the cover of the plants on the other side.

I called out her name once more for good measure, then placed one hand on the hilt of my sword to keep it steady, tucked my wings, and dived. From their perspective, with their cover blocking their line of sight, it would look as though I’d returned to the palace. 

My hair whipped around my ears and the tips of my wings flapped against my ankles. When I was close enough to the ground that they couldn’t see me, I flared my wings back out. They caught the air with a  _ phwoompf _ and a flash of purple. I launched myself forward with the momentum of my aborted dive, crossed the stream, and planted both feet on the other side, wings tucked and ears open.

The rustling of Dawn’s wings continued at the same steady pace. She hadn’t heard me. 

I untucked my wings and followed carefully, making sure not to bump any plants myself. Dawn’s rustling stopped, and I hovered, frozen. A moment later, she resumed, and I followed suit.

“Hey wait!” yelled Sunny. “Wait, pick me back up!”

“I can’t carry you the whole way, silly-billy!” came Dawn’s chirping tones. “I’ll get tired!”

Now confident that I wasn’t following them, they slowed down and became much more open about their movements. Sunny was still difficult to spot on the ground, but Dawn flitted over and around flowers twice her height.

“Where are we going?” asked Sunny.

“It’s a  _ secret spot _ ~” sang Dawn. “I found this place with lots of rocks that nobody  _ ever _ goes.”

“S-so… so we’d be  _ alone? _ ” asked Sunny.

I bit back a wince. Sunny was as obvious about his crush on Dawn as Dawn was about everything else. Unfortunately, he was unwilling to do anything more risky than dropping useless hints. Dawn was as perceptive as a daisy, so that was going nowhere. 

Part of me wanted to root for him. An underdog elf falling in love with a fairy princess? Perfect storybook romance. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t prejudice. Father disapproved of relationships between fairies and elves, but I liked to keep an open mind. I didn’t even dislike Sunny, in as many words. Sure, he was awkward and bumbling, but around Dawn, what guy wasn’t? He was nice, and clever, and remarkably attentive.

No, the problem was Dawn. Or, at least, her position. 

Dawn liked to act like she never had a thought in her head, but she knew the rules of the game and could play it sleepwalking. She knew what expectations people had, and bent and juggled those expectations to suit her own ends. All she had to do was bat her eyelashes, flash her perfect smile, and people would thank her for her generosity as they emptied their pockets. Half the time she didn’t even know she was doing it. 

Sometimes I thought it was a shame that she was the younger sister. She was charismatic and popular with our subjects, unlike the  _ current _ heir. And she might grow into the responsibility of that position, while I could never develop her easy grip on authority.

Sunny, who fled at the first hint of confrontation and could list every exit in a room with his eyes closed, would never be comfortable giving orders to eager subjects. Like me, he would never be suited for that life.

It would be different if Dawn returned his feelings but, as Sunny’s constant, desperate hints made obvious, she didn’t.

“Of course we’ll be alone!” said Dawn. “We couldn’t  _ plan _ if there was someone around to  _ eavesdrop _ .”

“Oh. Right. Of course.  _ Plan. _ ” 

I held in another groan and moved to find cover. 

Dawn and Sunny moved due east. I tailed them for over an hour, quietly shifting from rocks to bushes. If it was anyone else, I would feel concern, mounting tension. But this was Dawn, so all I felt was exasperation for whatever nonsense she had yet fling herself into. Finally, they pushed into a clearing.

“We’re here!” squealed Dawn. She jumped in the air and flew a loop-de-loop as Sunny pushed after her. I hid behind the trunk of a nearby oak tree, and flew up into the branches to watch from above. 

It was mostly rocks. The bits that weren’t rocks were dirt. It was not enticing by any stretch of the imagination, but Dawn was delighted. 

“What are we doing here?” asked Sunny.

“We’re  _ planning _ ,” said Dawn. “Nobody ever comes here at this time of year, so nobody can report us to  _ Marianne McFussybritches. _ ” She crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air, then mimed unsheathing a sword and swinging it. “ _ Myeh, myeh, myeh. _ You’re not allowed to do  _ anything _ ,  _ Dawn. _ You’re in  _ danger _ , Dawn. You need to try harder not to  _ die, _ Dawn. I’m Marianne and I don’t know how to have _ fun _ .  _ Blah, blah, blah. _ ”

I ignored her impression, and Sunny’s laughter, and looked around. It was no wonder that nobody would come here. The complete absence of anything interesting was one thing, but if I squinted I could just make out a wall of primroses a few dozen yards further on.

Dawn had gone to the border while the primroses were in full bloom. To  _ plan. _ I couldn’t take any criticism of hers seriously, even if her pantomime sword fight was entertaining. She was the type who’d try to nap in a spiderweb, and like it or not, I had to look after her.

“Did you bring the notes?” asked Dawn. She finished her act and landed next to Sunny. He pulled out a few sheets of loose leaf from his backpack and spread them out on the ground, using pebbles to hold them down. The two knelt over them, pointing and commenting on different sections.

I couldn’t see what was written from the branch, but that was fine. Those plans were their business. Their safety was mine. The two stayed put, engrossed in their notes, so I took the opportunity to relax. I laid down with my back against bark and quietly pulled my sword, still sheathed, to rest flat on my chest.  

“All righty! Operation: Marianne’s Spring Ball Extravaganza is underway!”

Oh no.

I shot back up, careful not to drop my sword, and stared down at the plans. Squinting did not transform the squiggles into legible words. 

“Are we sure it’ll even work?” asked Sunny. “Marianne might not like it.”

“She’ll like it!” insisted Dawn.

“She didn’t like any of the guys we’ve tried so far.”

“Well,  _ of course _ she didn’t! They weren’t  _ good enough _ for her _. _ ”

“Then why did we even-”

“That’s not important.” Dawn dismissed Sunny’s concern with a wave of the hand. “Look, she’s  _ my _ sister, right? So believe me when I say that she hasn’t been happy since Roland.”

I winced at the casual mention. 

“She only gets into our business because she’s lonely.” Dawn shoved three fingers dramatically into Sunny’s face. “Marianne gets back in a relationship-” She lowered a finger. “She’s happy and starts acting like herself again-” She lowered another finger. “And she stops hanging over our shoulders.” She closed her fist, then threw her arm over Sunny’s shoulders. “Then  _ we  _ can get back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.” 

“What do we do if she throws her drink in his face?”

“She’s not going to do that.”

“She did it to Cirrus. She did  _ worse _ to Thorn.”

“She’s  _ noootttttttt  _ going to do that. Thorn had her shoved in a corner. He  _ deserved _ that bloody nose.”

Sunny grimaced. “Okay. And…?” he gestured to the paper.

“ _ He’s _ gonna be standing in the center of the room, by the fountain, which, as I’m sure you’re fully aware, is nowhere near the impact range of a thrown drink. No, the real trick will be keeping Marianne from just walking out.”

I groaned, confident that they wouldn’t hear me. Dawn was always introducing me to new guys. Unfortunately, she thought that I had the same criteria for romantic partners that she did: _ ‘male’ _ and _ ‘nearby. _ ’ My actual preference was... nobody.

Romance was a losing game. It was fine for someone like Dawn, who actually  _ was  _ charming, and pretty, and fun, and whatever other traits people liked. For someone like me though, the effort of molding myself into something people could tolerate wasn’t worth the payoff of their company. Solitude was perfectly satisfying, if only  _ someone  _ would leave me to it.

“The most important part!” said Dawn, looking deep into Sunny’s eyes. “Have you got it fixed?”

“Yup!” said Sunny, beaming. “The first dance is arranged for Marianne, but at the start of the second dance, Elwood is going to be standing to the left of the punch bowl-”

“Elwood?” asked Dawn. “No, no, no. You mean  _ Cyprus. _ ”

“Cyprus?” Sunny looked back over his notes. “But yesterday you said you wanted to dance with Elwood.”

“Who cares about  _ yesterday _ ?” asked Dawn. 

Sunny frantically rearranged papers, muttering to himself.

There was a sound. Stones crunched and clacked together. I drew my sword and looked toward the wall of pink primroses. Sunny and Dawn, still focused on their plot, were far enough away that Dark Forest collection crews should have ignored them. But then, residents of the Dark Forest weren’t known for being picky about administering punishment. The clatter of stones came again - far too close.

Further into the clearing, two slabs of stone leaned against each other. There was an opening underneath them. Small enough that I wouldn’t have noticed, had my attention not been drawn to it. Something burst from the shadow, charging straight at my sister.

A lizard. Mouth open, teeth sharp.

“Dawn! Sunny!” I screamed. They both whipped their heads up, shock plain on their faces. “Lizard! Get up here  _ now!” _

Responding with speed that a lifetime of mishaps had trained into her, Dawn grabbed Sunny around the middle and flew toward me as fast as the extra weight would allow. The lizard missed her by a hair, scattering their papers and snapping its jaws up after them.

After a several seconds of struggled flight, Dawn hoisted Sunny onto my branch and lighted down herself. Somehow, despite the mad scramble, her white dress was pristine, and her blonde hair was perfectly framing her face. Her angry, angry face.

“Marianne.” Dawn said. She was trying to be threatening, but I was immune to her brand of impotent fury. “ _ How _ did you _ find  _ us?”

“You’re  _ welcome _ , Dawn. I’m always happy to help my favorite little sister.”

“I’m your  _ only _ sister.” She grabbed my arm, the one without the sword, and leaned her face so close I could feel her breath. “ _ How much did you hear? _ ”

“I just got here!” I lied. “It was  _ so hard _ to track you-”

“Guys?” whimpered Sunny.

“I swear, if you were eavesdropping-” 

“Why would I want to eavesdrop? Also  _ you’re welcome. _ You know. For the  _ lizard.” _

“ _ Guys? _ ” Sunny tugged on Dawn’s sleeve and pointed down.

The lizard was at the base of the tree. It was climbing.  _ Fast. _

“It can  _ climb?!”  _ Dawn shrieked. She gripped my arm tighter and shook frantically. “Marianne, it’s  _ climbing!” _

This was bad. We weren’t safe in the tree, but there was no way we could outrun a lizard on the ground. If Dawn and I stayed airborne it couldn’t reach us, but Sunny couldn’t fly. And there was no way we could carry Sunny long enough to get away - not if we were going to stay out of reach of those jaws.

“Marianne?” asked Dawn. “What do we do? You have a plan, right?  _ Tell me you have a plan! _ ”

I stood up and pried Dawn’s fingers off my arm.

“All right, listen up. You two get to a higher branch. If the lizard gets up this high, then fly down to the ground and run. You’ll have time to get away while it climbs back down.”

“We’re just going to  _ sit _ and  _ wait for it?!” _ shrieked Dawn. Sunny was already climbing.

“No,” I said. “ _ You’re _ gonna sit and wait for it.  _ I’m _ gonna fight it.” I clutched my sword, tucked my wings, and dived.

“What?” shrieked Dawn, but it was too late to stop me. I could only hope she’d follow instructions.

  
  


I plummeted, parallel to the tree’s trunk. Squinting against the wind in my eyes, I kept my eyes on the lizard. It was coming quick. It watched me fall and moved to intercept me, mouth open wide. Perfect.

Just before impact, I flared my wings back out for another  _ phwoompf. _ The lizard scuttled upward to grab me, but I dodged to the side and dropped past it. It tried awkwardly to turn itself around to face back toward me - away from Dawn and Sunny.

I flapped hard and pushed myself back up, until I was level with its back. Whether it was facing up or down, as long as I was airborne and it was stuck to tree, it had no way to protect itself. The lizard hissed and tried to lean back far enough to swipe at me with one of its forearms. I darted in close and slashed at the base of its tail. It hissed, tried one more swipe, then dropped off the tree. It thudded to the ground and scampered away. 

It ran south. Good. We wouldn’t stumble across it again on the way home. 

“Dawn! Sunny!” I shouted upward. “It’s gone!”

There was no reply. 

I flew up and shouted again. No response. 

I saw the problem. 

Dawn, panicky and impatient, had grabbed Sunny and flown as far from the tree and as high as she could. Defying logic, as usual, she had decided to fly _ toward _ the Dark Forest.

There was no time to scream and shout for their attention. I planted my feet firmly and pushed off after them.

I wasn’t the fastest flyer, but Dawn was carrying an elf. Even so, they were  _ high.  _

Dawn’s wings started to falter. She wouldn’t be able to stay up for much longer. This wasn’t fast enough. I unbuckled my sheathed sword and let it drop to the earth below, pounding my wings down and hoping that would be enough.

I got closer. 

Closer.

I could Sunny’s knuckles clawed into her white dress. I could see the sweat beading on both of their faces. I was so close.

Dawn turned around and saw me. She smiled. Her wings gave one more feeble twitch, and she stopped flapping.

I screamed as she began to tumble. She attempted a few weak flaps, but kept falling. I leveled my wings out and shot down, trying to intercept. We were squarely over the Dark Forest now. Assuming we survived the fall, then broken wings would be the least of our worries. 

“Dawn!” I screamed, hoping she’d hear me over the wind rushing in both our ears. “Dawn! Drop Sunny!”

“What?” screamed Sunny. “No! No, don’t drop Sunny! Don’t drop me!”

Dawn looked up at me, exhausted.

“I’ll catch him!” I screamed again. “I promise! Dawn, drop him, please!”

The tips of the tallest trees zipped past us. Before us, leaves and branches crowded, blocking out the ground. Dawn let go. They began to drift apart, and Sunny scrambled in midair trying to grab for her. 

Dawn, load lightened, gave one strong flap and managed to throw herself and cling against the tip of a pine tree. Sunny kept falling, screaming, clawing frantically at passing branches. I shot after him. 

Sunny crashed into a pine branch and bounced off with a yelp and a thud. The change in trajectory catapulted him into another branch, and another. He had slowed down, but those same branches limited my own movements and I still couldn’t reach him. As we dropped lower, the foliage behind us blocked out sunlight, and I had to strain my eyes to keep track of Sunny. I kept my wings tucked, straining my hand out. If I could just-

There was another thud, louder this time. A yelp of pain, followed by a whimper, followed by silence. I flared my wings out and squinted downwards. That mossy shape… Oh, that was the ground.

Oh.

_ Oh. _

I touched down. The ground here was spongy and giving. I moved forward slowly, arms up for balance.

“Sunny?” I couldn’t make myself speak any louder than a whisper.

Thorns, spikes, and poisons lurked in the dark. Who knew what creatures we might run into. Why had I left my sword behind?

I took another tentative step forward. There was a muffled groan from beneath me. I choked back a yelp and jumped off Sunny’s prone form. He was facedown, short limbs akimbo in a bed of very thick, dark moss. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see if he was breathing.

“Sunny? Are you still alive? Please be alive” I poked one of his less distressed-looking limbs.

He didn’t move, but there was a quiet, pained whimper. That was some relief, at least.

“Are you able to get up? We can’t stay here.” He shifted, barely, and I tried to find a non-injured area I could grab.

There was rustle in the trees behind us. I whipped my head around, but saw nothing.

“I’m sorry about this.” I jabbed one arm beneath his legs and another below his shoulders. He groaned at the pain. I gripped tight and flapped as hard as I could, straight upward, trying not to bump into any branches. 

Between the fight with the lizard and flying after Dawn, and now with the weight of an adult elf, I didn’t have the energy to fly up. We had cleared only a few branches when the strain overcame me and my wings refused to flap. We thudded back to the mossy earth. I tried my best to twist my body underneath Sunny’s and cushion the fall, but he cried out and the impact and his head slumped. 

I jabbed him a few times in the face. He was unconscious.

I was trapped in the Dark Forest with an injured, unconscious elf, no sword, and no way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunny's immune to fall damage, so it's okay to let him hit the ground at terminal velocity.  
> Trust me, I'm a professional.


	2. Marianne 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like my prose? Hate my prose? Want Sunny to hit the ground at terminal velocity again? 
> 
> Leave a comment!
> 
> I live for validation from strangers on the internet. Please, god, just let me have this.

The situation was dire, but less dire for me than for most. No matter anyone’s opinion, I was royalty. Even if I wasn’t  _ supposed _ to be in the Dark Forest, I wouldn’t be abducted or harassed without consequence. No scout would attack me - that is, not if I could convince them of the truth. My presence -  _ our _ presence, Sunny unconscious on my back - may seem suspicious, especially in spring, but if we were caught I’d just have to explain the situation and hope that The Bog King was reasonable.

Royalty. Reasonable. I thought of Dawn, and tried not to think  _ too  _ positively. 

I couldn’t see Dawn through the foliage, against the distant glint of sunlight. Hopefully she had regained a bit of strength and moved to a safer position. I could all too easily imagine her doing something stupid like diving in after us; I entertained the idea of staying put until she inevitably  _ did _ dive in after us. I’d save myself a return trip, after all. It’d be a hassle if I managed to save Sunny then had to return for Dawn.

But I couldn’t risk Sunny’s life on that chance. The odds of Dawn diving headlong into trouble seemed much more likely than the alternative, but Sunny, already blacked out from pain, couldn’t wait. I’d just have to hope that she could get herself out of trouble this time.

I’d shifted Sunny from my arms to my back. I couldn’t move my wings while I carried him, but my wings were useless anyway. At least this way I wouldn’t drop him. 

I trudged through the thick moss, slowed by frantic checks around me with every quiet twitch and creak of wood. Moss turned to bark. Bark turned to black earth. I stayed quiet and low to the ground, but I couldn’t silence Sunny’s unknowing hisses of pain.

Tense minutes passed as we moved through the trees. We saw no one. It seemed too much to hope that we could make it out unaccosted, but with each new silent clearing it seemed more possible.

We pushed past a low shrub, and the ground before us dropped down into a small ledge. Not far enough to be a major challenge, but enough that I risked my ankles if I wasn’t cautious. It would have been simple to move Sunny to my arms and float down - even my tired wings could manage a leap that small - but I didn’t want to jostle him. It would be easier to climb down a plant. 

I grabbed the stem of a nearby climber for balance, then stepped off the edge onto a sturdy looking leaf. The leaf was bisected, with two segments growing out like an open book. They were mostly red, except their edges, which were green, with pointed fringes.

I placed my foot down on the center-line, and the leaves snapped shut around my leg. I bit back a scream and tried to pull my foot back, but the fringed edges interlocked and trapped me. 

I was stuck. I leaned back, trying not to topple over the edge. My other leg was up on the ledge behind me, burning with the effort of maintaining my precarious position. One hand balanced Sunny on my back, and the other white-knuckled the climber stem.

I gripped the stem tighter, heaved myself upward, and kicked hard. The trap plant stayed true, but the climber stem snapped. We toppled forward over the edge, and this time I couldn’t help my scream. 

Sunny slipped off my back and hit the ground with a thud. The trap plant, determined to keep my foot, caught me midair. I dangled upside down, thrashing uselessly. With my arms hanging down I could just brush my fingers against the dirt. I couldn’t push or pull for leverage. I kicked against the plant with my free foot, but to no avail.

“Did you hear that?” A voice nearby. Grumbling and deep. Eerie, in a way exclusive to the citizens of the dark forest.

I held my breath and hung still. 

Rustling in the underbrush grew closer.

I didn’t have my sword. But, even without my sword, I had my training. I rocked backward and pulled myself up, clenched my core, strained up to my foot. I grabbed the fringes interlaced around my leg and  _ yanked. _

That, with help from gravity, did the trick. I thudded to the ground, grabbed Sunny, and dragged him back between the ledge and an outcropping rock. 

The rustling became crashing as branches snapped and footsteps stomped closer.

Two monsters pushed their way into the clearing. Each taller than me and four times as wide. Their skin was grey and mottled - slick, like an amphibian’s. Jagged teeth jutted at odd angles from their massive mouths.

I held my breath. Sunny’s breath was shallow and quiet.

They examined the area through tiny, black eyes. They breathed through open mouths, filling the area with a stench like mold. 

One shoved aside shrubs, looking beneath them. The other bee-lined for our rock.

I held Sunny tightly and tucked my feet beneath me, ready to flee. If I tried to fly in this state I’d probably be caught immediately, but there was nothing else I could do unarmed.

The monster stopped short and looked up.

“Over here,” it said. It pointed at the trap plant, half-laced and ripped.

The other approached and looked. It exchanged a glance with its partner, and they burst into raucous laughter. 

“Someone got stuck,” one giggled.

“Shoved their whole foot in it,” snorted the other.

One smacked the other’s shoulder, which thumped to the ground with a guffaw. They laughed, and kept laughing. The mold smell was almost overpowering.

I bit back a grimace at my  _ apparently _ obvious blunder. If I’d been caught then these hideous things would have sooner mocked me than attacked me, but somehow the thought wasn’t comforting. 

Eventually they calmed down and left, giggling, pushing away through the underbrush. I waited with Sunny until long after they left, then scooped him back up onto my back and set off again.

After a few minutes of paranoid hiking, convinced by every rustling leaf that I would bump into another set of monsters, I noticed something new. There was a mushroom. In fact, there were a  _ lot  _ mushrooms. Each was taller than me, if only just, with large open caps. They formed a line, not quite uniform, but an unmistakable and deliberate  _ line _ . And, unless I was very much mistaken, squinting into the dark of the forest. the line headed west.

An easy path. An  _ easy path _ , in the Dark Forest. Even without the misleading trap plant from earlier, that would have raised suspicion. What would this one do? Lead me in circles until madness? Poison me? I crept forward and poked the nearest mushroom, half- expecting it to turn around and stab me. It didn’t move. I grabbed the brim of its cap and wiggled. Nothing. As far as I could tell, it seemed a normal mushroom. I pulled myself up with one arm and kicked up a leg, balancing Sunny on my back. I stood, and it held our weight easily. 

I shifted Sunny’s weight to my arms, then jumped off the mushroom and onto the next, with only the slightest flap of my wings. There was no strain in so small a flight, and no response from the mushrooms. I followed the line. It was almost as fast as flying, but took so little strength that I barely had to strain.

After long minutes, there was a light in the distance. Soft pink light, from between two massive trunks. I leapt from the line of mushrooms, which veered away and back into the darkness, and ran to it.

I burst out between the stems of two pink primroses, into the shining daylight of my own kingdom. To rock and rubble, instead of green pastures, but bright and wholesome nonetheless. I collapsed to the sweet earth, and accidentally thudded Sunny to the ground next to me.

“Marianne!?” Dawn landed next to us in an instant, and squealed as she grabbed our faces and counted our limbs. “Are you guys okay? Did anything try to eat you? Do you have all of your skin? I heard from a friend, that heard from her cousin, that there was a creature in the forest that could infect your brain and turn you into a zombie that was compelled to climb tall trees, and you don’t  _ look _ like you’ve been infected by zombie tree climbers, but can we be  _ sure?  _ And-”

“We’re fine,” I said as I pushed her pinching hand off of my cheek. “We’re not zombies.”

“Just what a zombie  _ would  _ say.”

She moved away from me to poke and prod at Sunny. I raised a hand to stop her.

Sunny,  _ miraculously, _ opened his eyes at her first gentle touch.

“I’m cured!” he said as he his arms up in joy. “The power of friendship has cured me!”

I gave him a stern look and in a steady, calming breath.

“Sunny?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you just…  _ fake. unconsciousness. _ for the past  _ half-hour _ . so that I would have to carry you? So that you wouldn’t have to  _ walk _ ?”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. I was definitely, totally out for the entire time we were in the Dark Forest. Absolutely no exceptions. I only woke up just this second, when I was cured through the power of friendship. And if I  _ did _ remember anything about how unconscious I was, I’m  _ certain  _ it wouldn’t have  _ anything _ to do with how many times you dropped me. So maybe it’s a good thing I don’t remember.”

“Sunny?”

“Yes?” He batted his stupidly long eyelashes at me.

“One of these days I’m going to murder you in cold blood and, I cannot stress this enough, the courts will thank me for it.”

“Marianne,” Dawn pouted, “You  _ promised _ you’d stop threatening to murder my friends.”

I jabbed an accusatory finger at Sunny while I looked at her incredulously. She ignored me, and instead poked and prodded at him, counted his limbs, and asked if he was  _ really _ sure he wasn’t a zombie.

I groaned and flopped back down, grateful, at least, that she was no longer pestering  _ me. _

Sunny was unbothered at her ministrations, and sat up easily so she could have better access. As he rose, he released something that had been stuck, flattened between him and the ground.

A pink primrose petal.

It was nearly as large as Sunny’s torso, it must have gotten stuck underneath him after we passed beneath the flowers earlier.

I lunged forward. I grabbed the petal and chucked it as far back into the darkness as my strength would allow. Being a petal, it simply drifted down a short distance away. I grabbed it again, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it, successfully, back into the Dark Forest.

There. Safe. I turned back to Dawn and Sunny, who were staring at me with open confusion. 

“Primrose petal,” I clarified, pointing in the direction I’d thrown. They still looked confused.

“Primrose petal.” I said slowly. “The reason the collection crews come every spring. The super dangerous, _ super illegal _ things that mess up people’s heads.”

“You’ve got one stuck to you, though,” said Dawn. I jumped, scrabbling my arms all over myself. Sure enough, there was one creased against my shoulder. I crumpled and pitched that one too.

“Why are they super dangerous and illegal?” asked Sunny, as he stood up and dusted himself off. He winced as he did it. Dawn immediately cooed and offered to help.

I groaned, loudly, because of every single thing that was happening.

“All primroses,” I started, still speaking slowly, “their petals, seeds, pollen, leaves, stems - anything you could  _ make _ from any of those things - are  _ dangerous _ . Not only are they dangerous, they’re property of the Dark Forest. It’s the biggest element of our peace treaty with them. Any Fairy Kingdom citizen stealing primrose materials would be considered a breach of that treaty and a potential declaration of war.”

“War?!” asked Sunny. He brushed the front of his shirt frantically to scrub any trace of petal off.

“Why does the Dark Forest get them? They grow on the border, we should get half,” said Dawn.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to grab my darling sister by the shoulders and physically shake sense into her, or to kiss her stupid cheeks and pat her on the head.

“Dawn. We don’t  _ want  _ half. You were  _ there _ when the negotiations were happening. There were announcements about this every day for months. Swarms of people have moved  _ into our house _ every spring for the last several  _ years _ because of this. It’s weird enough that Sunny doesn’t know about this, but you have  _ no _ excuse.”

Dawn looked at me, brows furrowed. 

I groaned. “Primroses. are. dangerous. The only thing they’re useful for is potions, and the potions they’re used in are all illegal in the Fairy Kingdom anyway. The Bog King is doing us a  _ favor _ by taking them.”

“So we’re giving the  _ bad guys _ super dangerous, powerful potion stuff, and that’s  _ good?” _ asked Dawn. 

“What kind of potions?”  Sunny asked at the same time.

“They’re… ugh. They’re used for the bad kinds of potions. The evil kind that mess with your head. Luck Potions, and Love Potions, and Death Potions and all the really nasty ones.”

“How can a Luck Potion be bad?” asked Sunny.

I flinched at the question. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard one like it. I’d asked similar questions myself once. I didn’t want to remember. It had been over a decade by now, but I would never forget the victims that had been brought in. 

“It’s… It’s not really…” I tried to start, but words failed me. “Those kinds of potions… They  _ sound _ good, but what they’re good for isn’t really  _ you _ . Does that make any sense?”

They shook their heads in unison.

I sighed and ran a hand down my face, looking for the words.

“All right,” I said, finally. I steepled and un-steepled my fingers, then turned to Dawn. “Okay. Dawn. Let’s play pretend. Let’s say that there’s somebody who _hates_ Sunny. Just _hates_ him, _so_ _much_.”

“This doesn’t feel very pretend,” muttered Sunny.

“And this person, this somebody, is  _ right _ on the edge of the clearing.”

“ _ We’re _ on the edge of the clearing. This isn’t subtle,” said Sunny.

“And they didn’t  _ tell _ you this, you don’t  _ know _ it, but if you punch Sunny in the face, right now, as hard as you can, they’re gonna give you gold and silver and jewels because they’re  _ so _ happy he got punched.”

“I’m going to side with Sunny on this one, you’re not being very subtle.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine then, Dawn, someone hates  _ you _ , and Sunny, they’ll pay you to punch her.”

They looked at me aghast.

“This is much worse,” said Dawn.

“Yeah, let’s go back to the first one,” said Sunny.

I groaned. “Fine. Different example. If you trip and fall on your face and give yourself a black eye, then, you don’t  _ know _ it, but when you go home everyone will be extra nice to you. Or, uhh... if you cover yourself in mud, then your tutor will be too distracted to grade your test and they’ll give you top marks.” 

They looked at me patient, waiting for me to continue.

“Well, would you do it?” I asked. “Would you punch your friend, or give yourself a black eye, or roll in mud?”

They considered.

“I wouldn’t do any of it,” decided Dawn. “I’d never hurt Sunny, and if I had a bruise on my face I’d be hideous for days until it healed, and I don’t care what marks I’m getting I’m  _ not _ muddying up any of my dresses.”

“I wouldn’t hit Dawn,” said Sunny slowly, “but I’d take the black eye and the mud.”

“All right,” I said. “Those are all reasonable choices. What a Luck Potion does, is it gives you the luck, but it takes away the choice.”

Dawn looked confused. Sunny’s eyes widened as he realized what I meant.

“Whether you want to or not,” I continued, “you punch your friend as hard as you can, because it’s  _ lucky _ . And then you smash your face into the ground, because it’s  _ lucky _ . And then you go roll in mud, because it’s  _ lucky. _ And you don’t know  _ why _ any of those things are lucky, you just  _ do  _ them because the potion makes you.” I sighed and clasped my hands. “It drives people mad. They take a Luck Potion, it wears off a few days later, and they’re  _ gone _ . Just, empty inside.”

“It lasts  _ days _ ?” Sunny sounded horrified.

“Longer. I think the biggest ones lasted for weeks.”

Sunny’s jaw dropped. He looked into the distance, shaken.

Dawn looked down at her feet, brows furrowed.

There were a people who recovered. Tiny potions that only lasted a few hours. But when they first came out of it, they weren’t… they weren’t  _ right. _ ”

“I remember.” Dawn spoke quietly, and didn’t look at us. “They’d just stop. Like puppets that were hung up, with nothing to make them move so they just  _ stopped. _ ”

I gaped at her. “You  _ remember _ ? But- but you were just a baby then!”

She shook her head. “Not that young. I could walk. I saw them when they were brought in.” Dawn shivered and slowly sat down. “Is that… when she?”

I nodded. Dawn hugged her shoulders.

“What?” asked Sunny. “What’s happening, who are we talking about?”

“Mirabelle Comfit,” I said, bitterly.

Dawn crouched and moved behind Sunny, as if he would protect her.

Mirabelle Comfit. She had been the most talented potion crafter the Fairy Kingdom had seen in decades - maybe centuries. She had lived with us in the palace when I was a child, and I’d hung on her every word as she lectured and experimented and created. Dawn had sometimes toddled along, barely comprehending, but eager to join the fun. Mirabelle had crafted light shows for us from chemical combinations. Fire we could hold, water we could breathe, and once a talking flower that could answer simple questions.

Even back then, the nobles had judged me. Jabs about my manners, my posture, my bearing, my ripped stockings, my frazzled hair. Mirabelle had never minded. Mirabelle would give me a potion that would make my tongue turn blue and force them out of her lab.

She had been my best friend. Right up to the day of her arrest.

But there was no point dwelling on that.

“Dawn?” I gave her my sternest look. “ _ How _ do you remember Mirabelle Comfit but not the primroses? That shouldn’t even be possible.”

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “If this is about those stupid meetings again, then I’ll tell you now what I told you before: I have never payed attention at one of those horrible snooze-fests and I never will, unless there are cute boys, or if it’s a meeting about something fun.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“One of these days you’re gonna kill me, and it won’t even be with a lizard.”

“You love me.”

“I do. But I don’t know if that means I should ban you from my funeral or force you to plan it.”

She smiled, pleased with herself, only for that pleasure to be overcome by a slow, dawning horror. She looked to see where the sun sat in the sky, then counted rapidly on her fingers.

“Oh no. Oh no no no!” She was up in an instant. “The Spring Ball is in three hours! We won’t have time to get ready!”

I groaned. That happened a lot around Dawn.

“Dawn. We’re all exhausted. Sunny and I almost died. Are you really worried about a  _ dance?” _

“Of course!” said Dawn. She put her face way too close to mine. “Are you  _ not?” _

“You’re ridiculous and you’re going to drive me insane.” I kissed her cheek, then shoved her away.

“The castle’s only an hour away,” said Sunny, now spry after his long rest. “We’ll be slow, but we won’t be late.”

“But we won’t have time to  _ get ready _ ! We can’t go to the Spring Ball looking like we crawled out of the dirt!”

“We did crawl out of the dirt. You watched us.”

“That’s not the point! We need to look amazing tonight, okay?”

She looked up at me with big, earnest eyes, and I had a decision to make.

I didn’t want to go to the ball. I didn’t want to stand around with a bunch of courtiers who didn’t like me but felt compelled to fake it. I didn’t want to meet whoever this mystery date was that Dawn had arranged. I didn’t want to watch Dawn exhaust herself trying to rearrange a love life that I wished would die. 

But Dawn had very nearly given her life for this stupid plan. There was no telling what trouble she’d get into I didn’t play along.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll stay for ten minutes. But I’m not dressing up.”

Dawn whooped and threw her hands up. I’m sure she’d have done a loop-de-loop if she wasn’t so tired.

We began our long trudge home. I made sure to collect my sword as we passed by the oak tree. It was dented from the fall, but repairable.

I was sure the next few hours would drag on as I waited for the chance to collapse into bed. But, no matter what shenanigans Dawn had planned, it had to be better than the Dark Forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did tell y'all Sunny was immune to fall damage.
> 
> This chapter marks the official break from canon. We are now firmly in the wild and incomprehensible realm of my dastardly head-canons. I know it's been a long and arduous trek, all two chapters, but we made it. Primrose petals can make lots of things, all of them are terrible, and Sugar Plum has a real name and a history with the main characters.
> 
> Did you know? A sugar plum isn't literally a plum with sugar on it. It's actually another name for a comfit: a nut, or a seed, or some other base that's been covered in layers of sugar to make a little candy ball. These candies were often served around Christmas. That's why the Sugar Plum Fairy is so prominent in Christmas stories; she's the living embodiment of holiday treats!  
> Also  
> Mirabelle is a type of plum and I'm a punny bastard.


	3. Bog 1

Stuff and Thang argued at the doorway, reluctant to enter. 

“You tell him.”

“No, you tell him. He likes you.”

“... He  _ does _ ? What did he say?”

“He likes you more. I’m sure of it.”

“No, I mean, what were his exact words?”

I knew enough of Stuff and Thang to know that they could maintain this back-and-forth for hours. They were both remarkable conversationalists; each could circumvent and aggravate as easily as they breathed, while leaving their discussion partners with plenty of opportunities to provide their own grating additions. 

They were excellent attendants and performers. My role was always clear.

“Enter!” I barked across the empty throne room. I slammed the butt of my staff on the ground beside me. Stuff and Thang scrambled into the room, passing and re-passing each other as they tried to shove the other before them. 

“What news?” I asked as I slouched against my throne. I’d been tense, waiting for news, and my back creaked as I moved. “I trust the primroses are being harvested on schedule.”

“Um. No word on the primroses, sire,” said Thang. He was the smaller one - a misshapen thing with jagged teeth and tiny eyes.

“Good,” I said. “Any alerts from the mushrooms?”

They both visibly winced. They were almost comical in their delivery, just toeing the line of plausibility. This was the subject I was meant to pursue.

“What news?” I growled, leaning forward, staring at Thang. It had taken me weeks after my coronation to perfect that growl, and they both cowered in approval.

Thang looked to Stuff for support, then recited.

“A fair Ian shelf theft, threw flimsy prose.”

There was silence. I waited for the rest of the message, but neither made any attempt to clarify.

My attendants were unhelpful, uncooperative, incompetent, and incomprehensible. If I managed to get even the slightest modicum of work accomplished despite their meddling, it would speak volumes of my skill as a leader. 

I was lucky to have subjects that gave me so many opportunities to prove myself.

“You know how furniture makers have been coming up with crazy names for their bookshelves?” Thang babbled, by way of explanation.

“Woodsmiths, the lot of ‘em,” said Stuff.

“That’s a good one.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, a bookshelf called ‘Ian’ got stolen? I think? And the thief was a bad writer, and they were reading their material during the theft.”

“Gotta get feedback somewhere.”

“But everyone thought his prose was pretty bad.”

The problem they’d given me was easy to solve. I'd have to get this message from its source. As they carried on, I rose from my throne, let my wings unfurl, and zipped past them toward the castle’s entrance. 

A gorge separated the entrance from the forest, and a stream ran through the bottom. Its quiet course was always faintly audible, though barely visible so far below. A single narrow bridge spanned the gorge - unnecessary for anyone with wings, but it gave my grounded subjects the chance to seek an audience, and forced any attacking armies into a single choke-point. More to the point, any message would have had to pass that bridge to reach me.

A line of mushrooms, closely spaced, stood sentinel across it. If any messenger would have to cross the bridge anyway, it was more efficient to have my own messengers already stationed and waiting. 

And what messengers they were. In the years I had employed them, and through the many tests I had run, I had never noted even the slightest margin of error. Messages were passed to their recipients with the exact wording and intonation of the original. In just the past few years, they'd become an incalculably valuable element of Dark Forest infrastructure.

I landed by the one at the close end of the bridge. 

“What is the message?” I kept my voice loud, nearly a shout. Quiet sounds would be passed from neighbor to neighbor, and it was better to keep the line clear.

“A fairy and elf left through primroses,” the mushroom whispered back.

Intruders. They would need to be apprehended. I nearly barked out an order to launch a brute squad, but bit back the words as I realized the delicacy of the situation. 

The mushroom said they had  _ left _ through the primroses. It hadn’t confirmed that any petals were taken. If the two intruders were already back in Fairy Kingdom territory, I wouldn’t be able to send an attacking force after them. Not without proof of wrongdoing. 

I almost scoffed at that thought. They were out in the primroses in spring, what further proof was needed?

But it didn’t add up. I tried to visualize.

If the intruders had tried to walk into the Dark Forest, or to take primroses without fully crossing into my territory, the line of mushrooms that spanned the border would have seen and reported their attempt. There was no such report. For the intruders to enter the Dark Forest without the mushrooms noticing, they would have had to fly in. 

But why would they have bothered? No one in the Fairy Kingdom knew about the mushroom sentinels. Their existence was a tightly guarded secret. Why would the intruders go to the effort of flying into the brush instead of walking? Why would they carry in an elf? And once they had entered, why would they simply walk back out again?

None of this made sense. I needed more information. The last mushroom in line waited patiently.

“Were any petals-” I started, but I cut myself off. It may have delivered the message, but this mushroom hadn’t actually seen the event. It knew only what it had told me.

I’d have to ask the mushroom that had seen it.

There was a practice I had nearly perfected of giving orders as simply as possible. It gave my uncooperative subjects less material to twist into mischief, and for those too dim to invent mischief, it was  less to remember. With the mushrooms, who passed messages word-for-word to their neighbor, who passed it word-for-word to theirs, and so on and so forth to the end of the line, a process that would be lengthened by hours or days with every additional syllable, I pushed this practice to its extreme.

I knelt beside the mushroom and spoke softly, so it would know to repeat my query.

“King asks: petals taken?”

It listened, considered, then turned to its neighbor and repeated in a whisper. The neighbor pondered, then turned and repeated. 

Eventually the question would reach its answer, and they’d pass the message back. Or, if none knew, the question would reach the end of the line and I’d be met with silence.

I estimated that this would take an hour. Maybe two, if it was a distant point on the border. Regardless, it was faster than going myself.

“Stuff! Thang!” I called. I raised my voice, so not to send another message. My two attendants scuttled out of the castle toward me. 

“A message will come in the next few hours,” I told them. “Alert me immediately.”

“Alert, Your Majesty! A message will come in the next few hours!” yelled Thang. I gave him a stern look. He lowered his head in shame.

I stalked past them, back to my place in the throne room. I sat, tense, and waited for news.

The primroses were nearly half destroyed. Only a few days longer. They'd be eliminated, as they had been last year, and the year before that. I only needed to stay vigilant a little while longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, perspective character change!  
> This chapter is pretty short, but I'm gonna start updating every week (give or take a day) instead of every two weeks (give or take a day).  
> Feel free to leave me a comment, critique, death threat, confession of magically compelled undying love. Whatever you got, I'm flexible.


	4. Marianne 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment if you see any typos please.

The ballroom had many entryways - most blocked off by guards, lest the eastern refugees enter uninvited. The main entrance, used by all members of the nobility and their esteemed guests, was preceded by a long, lavishly decorated hallway, and it opened onto a balcony that overlooked the entire ballroom. Upon entering the room, one could then observe those that had come before them and allow themselves to be observed in kind.

Logic dictated that the later in the evening one made their entrance, the more people had come before them, the larger their captive audience and the greater the impact of their display. Noblewomen in elaborate new costumes, young bachelors and bachelorettes looking to improve their prospects, lords in bitter rivalries, and anyone else who sought the eyes of the gentry vied to be the last through the doors.

The presence of the royal family complicated things somewhat. 

Whether it was wiser to enter before or after the king had been a matter of contention since the ballroom’s construction. To enter after the king - to stand above him and compel him to bear witness -  was not the action of a deferential subject. But to enter too early left one without a tool in the spider’s web of noble politics. And, more practically, when everyone tried to enter  _ just _ before the king, the crowded hallway became a safety hazard. 

Eventually, it was decided that the sovereign of the land should not be made to dally in doorways to suit the petty squabbles of his subjects, nor should his subjects be denied their grand entrances. The king should arrive in the ballroom exactly one hour after the ball officially began, so those who wanted to enter before had time to do so, and those who would enter after needn’t loiter in the hall until the appointed time.

I thought this was all a bit silly and just snuck in through the servant’s entrance whenever I could. Tonight, unfortunately, that was not an option.

I walked down the entrance hall on my father’s arm. Finely dressed courtiers, newly arrived themselves, bowed and curtsied to us, ran disdainful eyes over my casual clothes, and returned to their own conversations as we passed. 

“I suppose it’s too late for you to go back and change,” said Father. His gait was regal and his head held high, despite the slowness of his steps. 

“My clothes are fine,” I said. I had changed out of the ruined outfit I’d worn earlier into fresh pants and a tunic. I was perfectly presentable, if plain. More importantly, I could still move freely if I needed to beat a hasty retreat from whoever Dawn had arranged for me to be thrown at.

“Had you considered entering earlier? Your  _ simple _ clothing might then be more easily accepted, and not seen as a statement.” He emphasized the word ‘simple’. I didn’t read into it, though I knew he wanted me to.

“I’m only here because Dawn asked,” I said. “We both know she likes to come in late. If I came in earlier I’d have to wait longer before I could leave.”

Father was silent as he considered my words.

“I think,” he said, quietly, “that I have been too lenient with you. Far too lenient.”

I kept my posture tight, and moved only my eyes as I looked around. The present courtiers were paying attention now. They kept their heads forward as if they were still focused on their own conversations, but voices lowered and ears strained toward us.

Father usually didn’t speak that way where others could hear.

I said nothing.

“You don’t seem to understand that you’re putting your future on the line with this charade of yours.” His voice was low, but far too loud in this crowded space.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered, “But I’m sure we could discuss this further  _ in private _ .” 

He ignored me.

“You are scaring off potential suitors, Marianne. Men that could make you happy. Men that could take over for me when I’m gone. Men that could lead this kingdom somewhere great-”

“I don’t  _ need _ a man,” I whispered back. I tried to keep an even tone, but anger seeped in.

“Then what  _ do _ you need?” His tone was hard. He didn’t ask so I could give an answer, only to let me know I’d displeased him. “You alienate people with your bizarre clothing, you’re distant with the court, you march around pretending you can use a sword-”

“Pretending!?” I said the word too loudly, then reigned my voice back in. “I  _ can _ use a sword, never mind that I’ve had to teach myself.”

“You  _ taught yourself _ .” Father scoffed. “A dozen tutors in as many years couldn’t teach you a proper curtsy, but  _ you taught yourself.” _

A rash of whispers broke out among the courtiers. Hidden mouths moved behind raised hands. I said nothing. I had learned by every possible method that trying to defend myself against gossip only made it worse.

Father sighed loudly, as if he was _ trying _ to call attention to our discussion.

“You didn’t delude yourself like this when you were still with-”

“Don’t bring him into this.” I cut him off without thinking, my voice wholly audible. He gave me a stern look.

“Still with  _ Roland _ ,” he finished. “You made an effort then. You dressed nicely. You attended functions. That’s not to say you magically became any  _ better _ at these things, but with consistent practice you might have become at least adequate.  _ This _ , though?” He gestured to me with his free hand. “The neglect that you show your position, that you show  _ yourself _ , must stop. What, do you think that Roland will feel spited if you debase yourself in his absence?”

“ _ Father,”  _ I said sharply. “Do you  _ intend _ to be overheard?”

He stopped short and pulled his arm from my grasp. 

“Do I say anything that was not already known?” He raised his voice so it was clear throughout the hall. “There are standards for the heir of this kingdom that must be met. Do you think it is a secret that you have not met them? You behave as you do, all but advertising your inadequacy, but you’d place the onus on me to keep it hidden? What do you think I reveal, child?”

The hall no longer whispered. 

I clamped down on the flood of nerves welling up inside me. My skin burned, and I could barely swallow through the lump in my throat.

Father, for all that he spoke of revealing nothing, had revealed a great deal. This was not the first such speech he had given me. Since I was a child I’d received countless lectures detailing disappointments in my clothing, behaviour, and character - this wasn’t even the first time he had expressed reticence in having me as an heir. These diatribes, always given in private rooms and empty halls, were never  _ meant _ to be eavesdropped upon. But they always were _.  _ Guards and gossips had ensured that my father’s opinion was common knowledge, and the public curried favor accordingly. That is, they had snubbed and scorned me  _ subtly _ , knowing that their information was illicit.

Father had just removed that safeguard. By disapproving of me publicly, he had destroyed any pretext of indifference. Those who had tolerated my presence would grow cold,  and those who had been cold would become unbearable. 

A war of public approval with the most powerful man in the kingdom was not a war I could win.

I had reconciled myself to this outcome years ago. The intense discomfort was just as I had imagined it would be, but the revelation didn’t hurt in the way it might have when I was a child.

“Okay,” I said, plainly.

He looked down on me, eyebrows furrowed, and waited for me to finish. That was my complete thought, though, so he waited in vain.

“Do you have nothing to say for yourself?” he demanded, after too long a pause.

“Yeah. I said okay.”

“You will amend your behaviour?”

I shrugged. “That’s not what I said. You said what you thought, and then, to show I heard you, I said okay.”

His nostrils flared. The hallway fell silent. 

“Are you truly such a fool that you fail to comprehend my meaning? Or simply fool enough to ignore it?”

I said nothing, but did not look away.

The hour chimed. Father scoffed and turned away without another word, departing the hall with the same regal bearing he’d had when he’d entered. As soon as he was gone, I slunk back the way I came. I had to hold in the urge to throw up, or else to start crying. Whispers welled up behind me. At least they took efforts to talk behind my back and not to my face. For now.

I leaned against the wall at the far end of the corridor and waited for Dawn.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later, I was still waiting. Sounds of the ball, well underway, trickled in from the far door. Only a few very determined courtiers remained, each one glaring daggers at the rest and willing them to go first. 

Odious thoughts, usually reserved for the dead of night, pushed in at the edges of my mind. Dreadful whispers about my worth, about how Father might be right, about whether I deserved every scornful word and worse.

After the initial shock discomfort had passed, I’d calmed down enough to clamp these thoughts down. I couldn’t always fend them off. Only years of practice made it possible, and even so it was difficult. 

The nearer door crashed open. I jumped up and reached instinctively for my sword, which of course I hadn’t brought. 

Dawn burst in, saw me, and charged into my arms. I was close enough to use the wall for support, or else the force of her hug would have knocked me to the floor.

“I heard what happened!” she said, rapid fire. “I thought you were going to come early, but then you weren’t in the ballroom, and then Daddy came in alone, and then I  _ heard _ , and then I thought you must have gone to your room, and then you weren’t there either, and I _ told _ Daddy not to make any trouble tonight because I had a super important plan planned, but then he  _ did _ , and  _ ooh _ I am going to have  _ words _ with him, but the important thing is are you alright?”

Just having Dawn next to me helped. She pinched at my cheeks and ran hands through my hair, as if I might somehow bear scars and bruises from Father’s lecture.

“I’m fine,” I said.

She looked relieved, for a moment. Then she frowned.

“What was he  _ thinking?” _ She made the face she usually reserved for pouting, as if she could pry the answer from me. Her hands moved from my cheeks to my ears, still tugging.

“He probably wasn’t. It’s fine.”

“What do you mean?”

I gently pulled her hands away. “He knows he can’t get rid of me. His only other option is  you. ” 

She gave me a confused look. I took both of her shoulders gently. “Dawn, you know I love you very much, but he wouldn’t try to make you his heir. You are a born trouble-maker and the palace would be in flames by the end of the first day.”

She beamed. “I love you very much too!”

I kissed her forehead. “All he’s doing right now is making things difficult for me. He’s not getting his way, so he’s making sure I don’t get mine. One day I’m going to rule, and it’ll be harder to do that with subjects that have spent years treating me poorly on his behalf.”

She looked at me sadly. 

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t need anyone to suck up to me to do my job. And I’ve got you, so I won’t be too lonely.”

Her sad expression melted into a smile, and she squeezed me tighter. We stayed like that for a while. 

Finally Dawn broke away and tugged me toward the far door. “Okay, I’m happy we had this conversation, and I love you, and you’re my favorite sister, but I think we need to put this on hold for a moment because you need to get into that ballroom right now.”

I snorted at her abrupt subject change. She looked affronted.

“You have to! I’ve been planning this for weeks and I’m not gonna let him wait all night!”

“Him?” I cocked an eyebrow. Dawn went pale.

“Well- Well that’s- See,  _ actually-” _

“This is _such a_ _surprise,_ Dawn. There was no way I could have foreseen this. You evil mastermind. How could I have possibly known that you were trying to hook me up with someone? The shock is gonna kill me.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You knew what I was planning and you still came dressed like  _ that _ ?”

“Oof, ouch, my last two feelings.”

“Okay, but seriously,” she said. She dragged me toward the ballroom’s entrance. “He’s been waiting for like three hours because I expected you to come early, and I told him to wait at a special spot right by the fountain, which means he hasn’t moved and he’ll probably need a bathroom break soon so can we  _ please _ just get you into the ballroom already?”

I let her drag me. Everyone in the hall let us pass, happy to have one less competitor in the race to be last. We crossed the threshold and looked out onto the ballroom.

The ballroom was immense. A chandelier of living flowers grew out of the ceiling, and each bloom glowed magically, wafting its perfume throughout the room. Tiny, private alcoves jutted out from the primary, circular room. The central feature was a golden fountain, comprised of three monumental statues that towered over the rest of the assembly.

Dawn and I descended, and pushed our way into the crowd.

“You said he’d be by the fountain?” I asked. 

“That’s where I told him to wait.”

“He might have given up.”

“I don’t think so. He seemed really excited to see you again.”

“How will I recognize him? Wait, what do you mean again?”

I spotted him as the questions left my mouth. Golden hair framed a handsome, smirking face. His leaf green armor shone, newly polished. He stood up straighter when he caught sight of me, and I could see that it wasn’t nervousness that made him change his posture.

Roland was confident.

Time stopped. A pit of dread opened in my stomach, and my heart dropped into it. My skin ached as though a current ran through it. My hands started to sweat, and felt somehow separate from the rest of my body. Blood rushed in my ears. The room seemed to fall quiet, or I imagined it so.

Dawn was behind me. Her arm was no longer linked in mine. Without her to tether me, my body moved on its own. I drifted toward him - my feet carried me, somehow, but I couldn’t feel them. My entire body felt distant.

Roland ran his eyes up and down my body, pushed one hand through his perfect hair, then opened his arms for a hug.

_ The fucking bastard wanted a hug _ .

My fist cracked against his nose. Bone crunched. Blood spattered onto my sleeve. He screamed and stumbled back, but his heels hit the base of the fountain. His arms flailed, and he hit the water with a splash. 

There was a gasp, I think. The roaring in my ears made it hard to tell. Roland pushed his head up and sputtered.

“M-Marianne.” His face was coated in blood, which mixed with the water and seemed to pour out of him. “Marianne, wait, I-”

I grabbed the top of his chest plate and hoisted him out of the water. I held him there, teetering backward, and punched him again. My knuckle dug into his eye.

I punched gain. Cheek bone.

Again. His same eye, now swollen shut.

Again. 

Something caught my arm as I pulled it back. Someone was screaming? Maybe? I couldn’t tell. 

A guard grabbed me under the arms and hauled me backwards, but I didn’t let go of dumbfuck bastard Roland. I punched him again before anyone could stop me. Another guard grabbed Roland. He tried to pry my fingers off of his armor, but I held tight and swung again.

A weight hit me from the side. Dawn. She threw herself on top of me and screamed something. I couldn’t understand her through the roaring and the  _ shouting _ , wait, when had all this shouting started? 

I stopped swinging. I wouldn’t risk hitting Dawn.

Roland sagged and gurgled in the guard’s arms. His face was sopped in blood, as was most of his chest plate. The guard behind me lifted me to my feet, but made no move to step away.

“Marianne?” Dawn’s voice was high and panicked. “What was- are you okay? Did he- what did- What’s happening? Why did you do that?”

 I couldn’t respond. I could barely think straight. The only thing in my head was a foggy, thoughtless incredulity.

“It’s all right,” said Roland. Only a hint of his accent peaked through the choking and sputtering. I’d thought his accent was charming, once. A sign of how  _ traveled _ and  _ charismatic  _ my fiance was. “This isn’t the first time Marianne hurt me. This isn’t even the worst.”

He thought  _ I’d _ hurt _ him?? _

I kicked, hard. My foot connected with his chest plate and he stumbled back, but the guard behind him propped him upright. The one behind me gripped tight and heaved me backward, out of reach. 

Roland continued. He tried to give me a simpering puppy dog look, but the effect was ruined by the gushing blood and swollen eye.

“You left me at the altar, Marianne. You wouldn’t even tell me  _ why. _ ” 

“You know exactly _why,_ you rat bastard. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“ _ What is the meaning of this?! _ ” Father’s voice, even contorted by fury, was clear and authoritative. He stormed toward us. Courtiers leapt out of his way, leaving a clear avenue.

The guards holding me and Roland let go and snapped to salute. I thudded to the ground. Roland, unfortunately, kept his footing.

Dawn kneeled beside me and gripped my arm tight. She was behind me, so I was between her and Father. That was flattering. Even when I was the one in trouble, she still relied on me. 

Father looked at us: Roland’s bloody face and my  _ very _ bloody hands.

“ _ What. Is. The. Meaning. Of. This. _ ”

The situation felt distant and surreal. Like I was barely a person, only thinly tethered to a body that had decided, on its own, to pummel a man into a bloody pulp. I’d  _ definitely  _ beaten up Roland, I didn’t deny that, but through some cloudy logic it seemed like, because I’d never consciously  _ decided  _ to do it, it didn’t count.

Obviously I didn’t say that out loud. 

“It’s my fault, Your Majesty.” Roland looked up from beneath his swollen eye, but he wasn’t simpering now. No, he looked brokenhearted. Pathetic. “I pursued where I  _ wasn’t wanted. _ ”

Father whirled on me, fury burning brighter than I’d ever seen.

“What do you have to say for yourself? What justification could you possibly give for your behaviour?”

I thought about it, but I didn’t even have an answer that would satisfy  _ me _ . 

I shrugged.

Roland laughed. I knew that laugh. It was supposed to sound flippant, but through a mouthful of blood it sounded bitter.

“See? Even  _ she _ doesn’t know why she acts the way she does.” He smirked. “You’re so lucky I love you, Marianne. Nobody else could bear the things you put them through.”

“I don’t understand,” said Dawn, softly. Her knuckles were white on my arm. “He said that he wanted to meet you again. He said he still loved you. I don’t understand. Why did you attack him? Why did this happen?”

Dawn looked heartbroken. She’d been planning this for who knows how long, working with him to make this night happen. He’d been filling her head with whatever invented reality he ascribed to our breakup. She saw the violence I’d inflicted, but she had no idea why I’d done it.

I’d never told her. I’d never told anyone. I couldn’t bear the humiliation. She’d understand if she knew, but I couldn’t bear the way people would look at me. The public debate. The  _ pity. _

“ _ He  _ can tell you. If he’s got the guts.” I glowered at him, but he met me with a steady gaze.

“I made one mistake, Marianne. That woman didn’t mean anything to me.”

I blinked. I hadn't expected him to actually admit it. 

Dawn’s eyes went wide. She looked at me, then back at him, and made a disgusted sound. 

Roland continued.

“You left me. Left  _ us. _ We could have had a lifetime together, and you threw all of that away because I made  _ one little mistake _ .”

My head reeled.

“I caught you  _ cheating _ on our  _ wedding day _ and you call that ‘ _ one little mistake?’” _

Dawn leapt up and socked Roland in the jaw.

“ _ ENOUGH _ .” Father massaged his temple. “This is not a discussion to be had in public.” 

“ _Oh,_ _now_ we can have private conversations?!” 

Father gave me a look that could wither flowers. He motioned with one hand, and the guards surrounding us moved. One took each of my arms, another took one of Roland’s. Father turned on his heel and strode out of the ballroom, and we were made to follow. Dawn, guard-free, followed close behind.

Courtiers were silent as we passed.

We were led deep into the palace, to Father’s private audience chambers. No. To  _ His Majesty’s _ audience chambers. He unlocked the door, and the guards filed us in. When Dawn moved to enter he raised a hand, then shut the door in her face.

We were all alone in the room now. Father turned to the guards.

“Release them and step back, but be ready to intervene should it become necessary.”

The guards did so. The king turned to me.

“Marianne. You have wronged Roland. Apologize to him.”

“Beg pardon?” I asked.

“Apologize to Roland. Your behaviour was inexcusable.”

I looked at His Majesty, my feelings as obvious as his were obscure.

“He showed up like nothing happened after I caught him  _ cheating _ .  _ On our wedding day _ .”

“And he apologized.”

“ _ No he didn’t! _ ”

His Majesty clicked his tongue. “Didn’t he? Or did you refuse to listen?”

“He didn’t.”

“Then it is only because you didn’t give him the opportunity.” He turned to Roland and offered a silk handkerchief, which Roland happily accepted and used to wipe some of the now-drying blood from his face. 

“Roland. Speak. Marianne should hear what you came here to tell her.”

Roland looked from His Majesty to me, smug, and began his version of events.

“As you know, Your Majesty, Marianne and I were engaged for months. My darlin’ buttercup has always been… difficult.” He gave me a nasty smirk. “But, of course, she was the kindest, most beautiful woman I’d ever met, so I found it within myself to tolerate her  _ episodes. _ ”

“What  _ episodes? _ ” I spat. “I didn’t  _ have episodes.” _

“You’re having an episode now, Marianne,” said His Majesty.

“May I continue?” asked Roland.

“Of course. Never mind the interruption.”

I fumed, but Roland continued before I could object.

“Thank you, Your Majesty. Now, being a man of the world, I’d had other loves before Marianne. I didn’t  _ hide _ that from her, but I didn’t expose her to it unnecessarily - why would I want to hurt my poor bride-to-be with tales of long lost loves? I didn’t think anything of it, after all,  _ Marianne _ was the only woman in my heart. But then, on the day our wedding was  _ supposed _ to take place, a woman from my former life suddenly reappeared. She told me that she still had feelings for me, and I told her that my heart was taken. We shared a chaste kiss, when suddenly Marianne came charging in, slinging accusations of cheating-”

“I came to give you a  boutonniere, and you had your tongue down her throat.” I said.

“I tried to tell you that it wasn’t what it looked like!”

“No, you didn’t! You said, ‘Oh no, looks like I’m not going to be king, am I? How will I get my army now?’ You didn’t say a word to me!”

“You stormed out!”

“Marianne,” said His Majesty. “Listen to me closely. I have made it clear to you that I disapprove of your recent behaviour. In retrospect I don’t know what I’d expected of this evening. I must have been delusional to think you would be civil.” He waved his hand. “No matter. You need a firm hand to keep you in check. Roland, in all his patience, is willing to take you back. If you agree to marry him, I will consider all of your previous childishness amended. Do you accept?”

I stared at him, jaw dropped. I tried to comprehend and failed utterly.

“You- He’s a- Wait, is  _ that _ why you made a scene in the hall?”

He scoffed. “ _ Made a scene? _ Please.”

“That’s why you wanted people to hear us. You’re holding my public approval hostage unless I marry a cheater!”

“All men have  _ indiscretions, _ Marianne. The sooner you reconcile yourself to that, the happier you will be in marriage.”

I gaped. “I will  _ not _ reconcile myself to that! What the  _ fuck? _ ”

He sighed in frustration. “Stop acting childish. No partner is perfect. It is our love, and our  _ faith _ that makes them so. If Roland, the man you love, says that he did not betray you, then you must believe him.”

“Are you kidding me? I  _ saw him.  _ I’m supposed to believe his half-assed excuses over my own eyes?”

“This is a question of the faith you hold in your partner. Or, rather, your disturbing lack of it. I love Roland as I would my own son, and I know that he would not behave as you say he did.”

I crossed my arms. “So you’re saying that, if you love someone enough, you should ignore every bad thing they do and the evidence of your own eyes.”

“If you truly loved him, then that is what you should have done. That is what I expect of you now.”

I gave the king a flat look. He didn’t blink.

“All right,  _ Dad. _ I didn’t punch Roland tonight.”

There was a moment of silent, intense confusion. His Majesty looked at me as if I was mad, and Roland cocked an eyebrow as he gestured at his bloody face.

“I don't understand, child."

“I didn’t punch him. It didn’t happen.”

His majesty massaged his temple. “That isn’t going to work.”

“Are you saying you don’t  _ believe _ me? Don’t you love me,  _ Dad? _ ”

“ _ Enough. _ This argument is nonsense. There’s a difference between alleged marital indiscretions and public violence. There were  _ dozens _ of witnesses to tonight’s display.”

 “Oh, so that’s the qualifier? Witnesses?” I gave an incredulous laugh. “Well let me tell you, it turns out that there were a  _ lot _ of witnesses for Roland’s ‘little mistake.’” 

Roland had been quiet for a while, and now he grew pale.

“The guards you bribed were quick to talk,” I said, “and so were the boarding houses you stayed at. And by the way? The girl you’d been cheating on me with? Anura? Remember her?”

He had the decency to wince at her name. I drank in his discomfort like fine wine.

“It took her a while, but sure enough, she came in to give her story.  _ Somehow _ she seemed to think that you and I weren’t a real couple. Crazy, right? No idea  _ how _ , but she seemed to think that we were only together as a publicity stunt. You’ll never guess who told her that. Take a guess. Give it your best shot. I dare you.”

Roland looked uncomfortable, and not just because of his injuries. “That’s not… now buttercup, if you really think some made-up reports are going to-”

“ _ Made-up _ ? Do you think crown guards would give false testimony? Insult me all you want, but don’t you  _ dare _ insult the hard-working guards that defend my family’s lives!”

The three guards, still present, shifted somewhat at being reduced to a rhetorical device.

“I have a half-dozen witnesses with consistent stories that say you’d been seeing Anura for  _ weeks _ . And then you have the  _ audacity  _ to show up here uninvited and call  _ me _ a liar?”

“He was not uninvited, Marianne,” said the king. “I invited him. I sought him out a short while after your separation. He told me the story as I choose to believe it.”

“As you  _ choose _ to believe it,” I repeated. 

“Yes, as I choose to believe it. You’ve already been made aware of my opinion of your behaviour. I thought that with a sufficient reminder,” he gestured to Roland, “of who you might have been - who you’re  _ meant _ to be - you might come to your senses. But no. I see now that that was too much to hope for.”

“Who I’m  _ meant _ to be. You think I’m  _ meant _ to be his brainless little subservient bi-”

“Marianne!” His Majesty snapped.

“Oh, I’m sorry, no, you just want me to marry him, let him lead the kingdom, turn a blind eye while he screws other women, and lie to myself the entire time. That’s all. That’s my role in life. That’s the peak of my potential.”

“I’m tired of this. You have made it clear that you won’t see reason and, tragically, I cannot force you to do the sensible thing. You are dismissed.”

He clapped twice, and the room shifted instantly. The guards snapped into salutes and one strode away to open the door for me. 

I looked at them. My father and the man I used to love. Two men who had betrayed me. 

I turned and left without another word. The moment I crossed the threshold the door slammed behind me.

I stood alone in the silence of the hallway.

From around the corner, Dawn poked her head out.

“I’m alone,” I said, arms open. “You can come out.”

She unfurled her wings and rushed at me. I braced against a wall, ready for her body-slam of a hug. It didn’t happen.

She alighted in front of me, wrapped her arms loosely around me, and pressed her forehead gently against my shoulder.  
“I’m _so_ sorry, I _swear_ I didn’t know. I thought you guys had just had a tiff or something and that if you saw each other at a party in nice clothes that it would make it all better and I didn’t know that he’d been so horrible or I’d have never-”

The change in tone was so abrupt that I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing. 

She looked up at me, tears in her eyes.

I pulled my arms out of her weak grasp, threw them over her, and hugged her as hard as I could. She squeaked in surprise.

“You’re not mad?”

“Are you kidding?” I kissed the top of her head, then hugged her tight enough to lift her off the floor. “You punched him in the jaw!”

She squealed, half from joy and half from the tightness of my hug “I did! I actually hurt my hand really bad! Look!”

I let her go and she waved her hand in front of my face. Sure enough, her knuckles were faintly pink. I gave her another squeeze. She squeezed back.

“Have you eaten anything?” she asked when I finally let go. “You were waiting in the hallway for all that time, and then of course there was the fight, and then Daddy went and dragged you into his lecture room, and I can only imagine that you are  _ very  _ hungry.”

“Not gonna lie, I could eat.”

Dawn grinned mischievously. “I  _ may  _ have stolen a bunch of party food and hidden it in my room.”

I smiled back. “Slumber party?”

“Only if you tell me what was going on in there. I could barely hear anything through the keyhole.”

I snorted. “You were listening at the keyhole from around the corner?”

“Daddy always does that clapping thing. Gave me plenty of time to run away.”

“Ahh, gotcha.”

She took my elbow. Arm in arm, we set off for a private night together of food, rest, and long explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll have this updated in a week!" I said.  
> And then my computer broke, and this chapter was 5k+ words, and then I had to rewrite the whole thing for Reasons >:[  
> That's what I get for making promises lol
> 
> The first time I wrote this I was surprised by how much of a jerk King Dagda turned out to be. He and Marianne have a pretty okay relationship canonically, right? So what happened?  
> But here's the thing. Let's say your daughter comes home sobbing. On her wedding day. Calls off the wedding and never explains why. Completely reinvents herself.  
> There's a lot of ways you can respond and a lot of things that you can do. You know what you Don't do? You don't pressure your daughter to get back into a relationship. You definitely don't Just Stand By while her dirtbag ex puts on a public spectacle to try to pressure her back into said relationship. And you DEFINITELY don't Take The Dirtbag's Side! You don't help Arrange the public spectacle! And later, you don't put the dirtbag ex in charge of an entire army!  
> What the fuck is wrong with canon Dagda? Why is he like that! I don't know!  
> But yeah. Now he's terrible On Purpose.
> 
> Also, Marianne and Roland are fight-on-sight. Nothing can pursuade me otherwise. Ya girl practices fighting blindfolded for funsies. If she's not leading with a sword thrust, she's leading with these hands.


	5. Roland 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coherent posting schedules are for people with self respect. Luckily I'm immune.

So my plan backfired.

I was holed up in a cot in the palace medical center. It wasn’t completely necessary; my face was the only thing injured. But I’d insisted. Being seen around the court with a black eye and crushed nose would win me sympathy, but people would draw a connection in their minds between me and marred faces, and I couldn’t let that happen. Better to wait for a few days and let my face heal slightly. Then I could rake in all the benefits of their pity, without losing any long-term respect.

Staying in the medical center for a few days would make Marianne’s attack seem more grievous, too. Win-win. 

That was still strange, actually. Despite the proof on my face, I could hardly wrap my head around the idea of _Marianne attacking._ The girl I’d nearly married couldn’t attack a falling leaf if her life depended on it. She’d been almost as thoughtless and willing as her sister back then. But her sister’s natural ease and charisma had evaded her, just like the fatherly love that Dawn came by so easily.

Marianne had been a child in heart and mind, but her life gave her none of the leeway of childhood. She’d been awkward, overeager, and desperate for any hint of approval or affection.

She’d been _perfect._

The Marianne I’d almost married had had a bewitching malleability to her. She swallowed every lie I fed her like a precious antidote against a toxic life. If I gave the slightest hint of pulling away, she’d be on perfect behaviour, ready to do whatever was necessary to make me stay.  Poets would have written songs about such a perfect, obedient wife. 

And then she’d refused to swallow the lie that would have made her happiest, poor dimwit. 

One lie looks very like another. I’d fed her some half-dozen pleasant tales already, about how she was the only one for me, and no other woman could ever hold a candle, blah blah. But when I told her plainly that my affair wasn’t an affair, she didn’t bite. When she was _so close_ to securing her own happiness, she let me go. 

Tragic, really. Not very smart of her. Of course, her slow thinking was half the reason I wanted to marry her, so it wasn’t surprising.

After the cancelled wedding there was one obvious course of action: I ran damage control. I charmed her king and country in a way she never could. I spread my story of Marianne’s violent overreactions and dubious perception. Above all, I let her simmer in her own loneliness. When I thought she had suffered enough, when she understood the pain that questioning me brought, I could let her come back to me, even more desperate and loving than before.

That was the plan. As perfect as my little bride.

But the Marianne I’d seen in the ballroom wasn’t the same woman. She moved like she’d been through a war zone. She bared teeth and snarled and hissed like a cornered animal. Her father had said she’d ‘let herself go,’ and her sister said that she ‘didn’t care about dressing up anymore.’ I’d expected to find her a few pounds heavier and makeup-free, not lean and sharp and feral.

No. My plan hadn’t failed. It had simply worked too well. I had stayed away too long, and my poor lonely simpleton had gone mad in my absence. Like a flower without the sun, she had rotted away into a husk of what she had been before.

I’d still wife the crazy broad if I had to. A perfect, submissive wife would have been nice, but I’d take an angry one if it made me king.

Though obviously the ideal method, marrying Marianne seemed less and less like the path that would lead me to the throne. She was too far gone for my charm to bring her to her senses, and there was no law that could force her to marry me - at least, not right now. I’d have to choose another plan.

I had three strategies left that could win me the kingdom, all problematic: 

One. My original plan. I could marry one of the two princesses. Dawn was the obvious choice now that Marianne had been driven mad, but for the plan to work I would have to woo her. Unlike her sister, Dawn was outgoing and well-liked. It would be difficult to make her completely dependent on me, as I had done with Marianne. Or I could force Marianne to marry me if I had to, through blackmail or drugs or torture or threatening her sister, but word would certainly get out and that would be bad for my image. 

Two. I could woo the King and frame both potential heirs as unsuitable. This plan seemed more viable. The King was disappointed in both his daughters, who each showed signs of madness or incompetence. If I arranged the princesses’ downfalls correctly, I could be heir to the throne within the next two years. But that much time meant that many more chances for things to go wrong. But maybe, if I could charm the king on a shorter time frame...

Three. The obvious answer. Simple. Foolproof. Get military backing and stage a coup. I already had connections among some of the higher ranking generals. Convincing the King to give me his throne would take years, but an army? I could make it happen within the week, if not tonight. All that to say that I would absolutely _not_ be staging a coup. I’d have to be the stupidest man in the history of this kingdom. I may as well plaster a sign on my chest that says, “I, The King, attained this position through brute force, and you can too!” I had better sense than _that_ , surely. No, I would only resort to a coup if all other avenues had been exhausted.

  
  


Not that I could do much of anything right now.

I was holed away in a medical wing of the palace, confined to bed until my injuries healed well enough to see out of both eyes and breathe without reopening the cuts on my face. It wouldn’t do to fly out the door and choke on my blood on the way out. 

The medical wing was almost empty, other than some elf a few beds down pretending to sleep. I suspected that most of the palace residents stayed confined to their rooms when they took ill - this place was reserved for those that had no rooms to go back to. It suited me just fine. My recuperation was in a public part of the palace; people could look in on my pathetic state and use my terrible affliction to inform their ideas about what sort of a person Marianne really was. 

More importantly, it left me plenty of time to plan for Dawn. I had seen a bit of her as she set up ‘Her Plan,’ not realizing that it was the King and I who had put the idea in her head. But I hadn’t seen enough to make a plan. What did she do for fun? How could I find out? I’m sure I could get the King to tell me. It wouldn’t even raise suspicion if I phrased it right. If I told him that I saw Dawn as a confidant, that I wanted to press her for information about Marianne, maybe. Yes, that would do it. Act like I was wooing one of his daughters so he’d give me information on the other. Perfect plausible deniability.

The door to the hall opened, and Dawn came in. Her pink wings were tucked behind her, brushing the floor, as if she was afraid to take up too much space in this room lest she knock something over. She approached my bed. I was about to sit up to greet her but she didn’t stop, and she stuck her nose up as she passed. She stopped in front of the elf’s bed instead and sat down near his feet. I rolled over and pretended not to listen.

“Sunny?” she whispered. “I came to visit. Are you feeling any better?”

The elf, Sunny, groaned and stretched as he pretended to wake up.

“Dawn? Is that you? What day is it? How long have I been asleep?”

“You’ve been asleep for _ten thousand years._ ”

“ _What?_ ” I heard, rather than saw, the elf sit up in a mad panic, then groan dramatically in pain.

“Oh no! I was just teasing, please be careful! It’s only been one night, you were brought in yesterday, before the ball.”

“The ball. Right. How did it go?”

“Ugh. It turned out that _Roland_ is a _horrible person_ , and a _cheater_ , and he cheated on Marianne _on their wedding day._ ” I didn’t move, refusing to reveal my eavesdropping, even though her words were very pointedly aimed at me. Dawn disliked me right now. That could complicate things.

“That explains why she’s been acting so weird since they broke up,” said the elf. There was a pause, and a rustle of fabrics. “Who’s that guy?”

I kept still, and held my breathing steady.

“ _That_ sorry, sad-sack, miserable excuse for a person is _Roland.”_

There was a pause, as the elf processed.

“Yikes.”

“Yeah. Marianne walked in the room and saw him there and then _immediately_ started beating him up in front of everybody. It was great.”

“It was _great_?”

“It was really scary and confusing, and then I found out why she was doing it, and _then_ it _became_ great.”

“Ah.”

There was another pause.

“I told you she was gonna punch him.”

Dawn gave an exaggerated gasp. “No you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“No, you said she’d throw her drink at him.”

“I thought I said she’d punch him.”

“Nuh-uh. You said she’d throw a drink, and then I said he would be too far away for a drink to hit, and then we almost got killed by a lizard.”

Killed by a lizard? Was that slang? Wooing Dawn was looking less and less feasible with every passing moment, but if that was my only shot then I hoped I wouldn’t have to learn whatever code that was.

The elf groaned again. “Did you, uh. Did you dance with Cyprus?”

The question hung on the air, awkwardly, and neither spoke for a few moments.

“You know,” said the elf. “Marianne was gonna have the first dance, and then you were gonna dance with Cyprus.”

“Oh,” said Dawn. “Oh, yeah, no. Marianne was covered in blood and there were guards and Dad was yelling and I’m gonna be honest I forgot about Cyprus a little bit.”

“Nice. Yeah. Who cares about Cyprus, right? Cyprus is the _worst_.”

There was another awkward pause. 

“Sooooo. Get well soon, okay? I’m not having any fun with you stuck in bed all day. Do you think you’ll be better in time for the Elf Festival tomorrow? I don’t want to go without you.” 

“I don’t know. The doctors said it was pretty serious. I don’t want to risk anything.”

Dawn whined. “Well, get well soon, okay? I’d hate to go alone.” Dawn rustled the sheet as she stood up. 

“Wait!” said the elf. “Can I have a hug? For luck. To get better faster.”

Dawn snorted. “Of _course_ , you silly-billy. You don’t need to ask.”

They hugged, and the elf hummed happily at the contact.

“Okay, I gotta go. I’ll come back to visit soon, okay?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Dawn walked out of the room and harrumphed her nose back into the air as she passed me. She closed the door behind her, and the elf sat up.

“I know you’re not really sleeping.”

I turned and looked at him. He was short, but all elves were, and his clothes were disheveled and dusty. His dark face glowered at beneath a shock of even darker hair, which itself was tucked beneath a hat of fashioned lady-bug wings. He looked bruised here and there, but I couldn’t see any injuries that were hospital-worthy.

“What gave the game away?” I asked.

“What didn’t?” said the elf, and he started to list off on his fingers. “You ‘fell asleep’ too fast, your breathing was too shallow, you were way too tense, and your position wasn’t natural at all.”

Huh. Not bad. “You notice a lot.”

He barked a laugh. “First time I’ve gotten that one. Listen buddy, as one faker to another, you need to step up your game if you’re gonna get with Marianne.”

Now _this_ was unexpected. “Are you helping me?” I asked. “You want me and Marianne to be together?”

The elf nodded, as if it were obvious. “I’m the one who set up your meeting. Of course I want you and Marianne together.”

I gestured to my swollen face. “You know that she wasn’t happy to see me.”

“You think you’re the first guy she’s punched? Marianne isn’t happy to see _anyone._ ” The elf sighed. “Anyone except _Dawn._ ”

I tried to piece together what had happened. This elf and Dawn spent a lot of time together - Dawn knew him on a first name basis and seemed to enjoy his company - but it seemed like he wanted more from her than friendship. If he had a problem with Marianne spending time with her sister…

“You want Dawn, and you want Marianne out of your hair so you can spend time alone with her.” I guessed, and going by the elf’s widened eyes, I hit the mark.

Now this was a situation. It didn’t seem like I’d be able to seduce Dawn, what with this other rival here who no doubt knew more about her interests than I did. But he wanted me to be with Marianne, and it seemed like he’d be willing to help me to an extent, as long as it helped his own interests.

An idea struck me. An awful idea. One that would destroy my reputation if I was caught - but _I_ wouldn’t be the one who got caught.

“What’s your name?” I asked, leaning forward and looking at him through my good eye.

“It’s Sunny,” he said, looking toward me as well. 

“Sunny. You know, I think we’re kindred spirits, after a fashion.”

“What?” asked Sunny. I think he meant for it to be flat, but his tone arced up at the end. 

“We both love these princesses, right? But neither of us stand a chance. It’s not even our fault! We’re giving it our all, but they just won’t _see_ it.”

“Y-yeah, I guess.” Sunny’s eyebrows furrowed.

“I have done _so much_ for Marianne. I put so much time and effort into getting to know her, and getting her to know me, only to get tossed out on my ear as soon as I failed to meet her standards. You understand.” I focused on his face, watching for a sign as I continued. “You know you how easily you could lose everything.”

He grimaced and looked away.

Deadshot.

“It weighs on you, doesn’t it?” I pushed further. “You know that it only takes one moment where she thinks you’re not good enough, and you lose years of time and effort. You lose _her._ ”

He was trying to hide it, but his expression was dark. I had him.

“I think it’s a crime, the way you’re being treated. You’re clearly devoted to her.”

Sunny sighed. “I am. She’s amazing. I’d do anything for her.”

“It’s _obvious_ that you’d do anything for her. I can see that just by looking at you. You’d risk your life for her love- you probably already have.”

“I have!” Sunny sat up straighter. “I practically fought off a lizard for her! Why doesn’t _she_ see that?”

 _Oh god that hadn’t been slang_ . What the hell were these two _doing?_ I kept my face straight and kept on.

“I wish there was a way to _make_ them see how much we love them. We’d do anything for them! _We_ know they’d be happier with us, why can’t _they_ understand that? Dawn would be much happier with you than she would be bouncing between guys, right?”

“The other guys!” Sunny groaned. “They don’t make her happy! I do _everything_ for her. _I_ make her happy. But she always goes back to _them!_ ”

I gave him the most sympathetic look I could. “You make her happy, but she doesn’t try to dance with you, does she?”

Sunny slumped and said nothing.

I let the silence hang for a moment before I continued.

“I wish I could make them see it.” I mirrored him and slumped back, arms crossed. “If we could just make them love us for a _moment_ , they’d understand. But I guess you can’t _force_ someone to fall in love, even if it’s for their own good.”

Sunny stiffened and inhaled sharply. “I think I have an idea.”

Perfect. “What?” I asked, feigning ignorance. “What idea?”

“A way we could make them love us. Just for a moment, and then we could undo it, but they’d _see._ ”

“What are you talking about?” Hm. I’d have to talk him out of the ‘undo it’ part, but that could wait. No, once he had Dawn fawning all over him, he could persuade himself. 

“I’m talking about a Love Potion,” said Sunny. “I know where to find some primrose petals.”

 He _knew_ where to get _primrose petals?_ What kind of black market connections did this guy have? I’d been planning to drain my savings to fund his illicit search, but if Sunny had another method lined up then I wasn’t going to complain.

“We get the petals,” continued Sunny,  “We find Mirabelle Comfit, and we get her to make us some love potions. Dawn and Marianne fall in love with us, and they realize we would make them happy, and everybody lives happily ever after! It’s a perfect plan!”

"Mirabelle Comfit?" I asked. 

"A potion maker," said Sunny. "According to the nurses, she used to work here at the palace, but now she's a political prisoner in the Dark Forest."

My brain tripped over itself trying to follow his reasoning. His _first thought_ was to infiltrate an enemy prison while carrying contraband? Was this Comfit person the only potion maker in the world who knew the technique? What did he know that I didn't?

"So we get the petals, find Mirabelle Comfit, then come back," I said. Sunny nodded.

“That’s-” I beamed at him, but then frowned, and slumped down into my bed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s _almost_ a perfect plan,” I moped, laying it on thick. “But look at me. I can’t go adventuring through the Dark Forest in this condition.” I screwed up my face and forced some tears up into my eyes. “N-now M-Marianne will never l-l-love m-m-m-me.”

Sunny leapt out of bed and was at my side in an instant. “Don’t cry! I can do it myself!”

“Y-you can?”

“Look at me,” he said, holding his arms out and turning. “I’m small. Nothing in the Dark Forest will even notice me.”

“But aren’t you injured too?” I asked.

“I mean kinda. I got bruised up pretty bad when I hit the ground, but mostly I just wanted Dawn to fawn over me and nurse me back to health.” He scratched the back of his head. “It didn’t work anyway.”

Wow. I hadn’t meant it when I’d said we were kindred spirits, but I was starting to think there was something there. We really did think the same way.

“Will you be able to make it on your own?” I asked, leading him into it.

“Of course!” he answered. “Leave it to me. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He took off out the door without another word, much faster than I’d have thought for someone his height.

This plan was perfect. Either he’d come back with the love potions and Marianne would be mine, or else he’d die in the Dark Forest and Dawn would need comforting over the loss of her dear friend. 

Either way, all I had to do was wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roland and Sunny are way more similar than people are willing to acknowledge, don't @ me  
> I'll post the next chapter this week or three years from now. You don't know and neither do I


	6. Sunny 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no updates for months and then two chapters in two days  
> i care nothing for propriety or coherence  
> those are qualities for lame-Os and chodes  
> change my mind

It was about noon by the time I reached the edge of the Dark Forest, and the dirt patch where I’d sat with Dawn before. But there was a problem. The primroses, which had lined the border between the Fairy Kingdom and the Dark Forest, were _ gone. _ Stems lined it now, devoid of petals or even leaves.

“It’s only been a  _ day _ ,” I grumbled. “How fast do these Dark Forest guys work?”

But there was still hope. I adjusted my backpack - full of survival rations, bedding, rope, a knife, a compass, anything else I could think of that might have been handy - and stepped between two of the bare stems and into the trees.

It was immediately much darker, but the noon sun found its way in through cracks and crevices in the foliage, and I didn’t have to squint too hard. I knew Marianne had thrown two petals in here. The trick was finding them- if they were still around to find. I crawled on hands and knees, worming my way between two mushrooms twice my size, until I saw it. A petal, the size of my torso, crumpled into a ball, tucked halfway under a root. I lunged for it, and when I had scooped it up I unfurled it and checked for damage. It was  _ perfect. _

I squealed - no, no I didn’t, I laughed, masculinely - and I tucked the petal into my backpack. A few more minutes of searching and I found the other, similarly undamaged. Good. One petal for each of our potions. I was a genius for thinking this up - Roland didn’t know how lucky he was, having a strategist like me on his team.

Speaking of strategy, I’d done some research.

I’d wanted information after our first scare with the primroses. The nurses brought me a copy of the treaty Marianne had talked about, but it was all legalese and didn’t tell me anything worthwhile. But the nurses, once they realized what I was reading, had plenty to say.

Mirabelle Comfit used to work at the palace as the head alchemist and potions distributor, which apparently meant she worked closely with the medical center - every nurse old enough to recognize the name had a story to tell. 

She was well liked. Clever. A bright light of a woman with a bright future ahead of her.

But then she started using primrose petals as a power source for some of her more dubious experiments. They’d been a controlled substance even then, but who would have had access if not the head alchemist?

She started hoarding them, experimenting with what potions she could make, how concentrated she could make them. Pushing the limits of her craft. The nurses said she had so many bottles, she must have been doing that for  _ years.  _

But that wasn’t what got her caught. 

No, she only got caught once she decided that she needed to test them. And without suitable test groups, she decided to unleash them on the citizenry.

Fairies started acting erratically, burning their homes, leaving their spouses. And those poor souls would be taken to the experts at the palace medical center. There Mirabelle Comfit tried to ‘cure’ them, all while gathering her data.

It had been a disaster when she was discovered, apparently. One second the medical staff was caring for a new influx of patients, the next second the palace guard was storming the medical center, the next second the head alchemist was screaming and swinging a scalpel as she chucked mystery bottles at anyone in sight.

Despite being surrounded by soldiers, Mirabelle Comfit escaped the palace and fled over the border. She left behind dozens of books full of detailed notes - the nurses disagreed on whether King Dagda had had the notes locked away or burned.

Mirabelle Comfit never faced punishment for what she’d done to the citizens of the Fairy Kingdom. No, she faced punishment for what she’d done to the king of the Dark Forest.  According to the Bog King, or at least according to the emissary that he’d sent for negotiations, she’d fled into his kingdom and unleashed one of her modified potions onto the royal family.

Beside control over the primroses, Mirabelle Comfit was the next biggest element in the peace between our Kingdom and the Dark Forest. To appease the Bog King, Mirabelle Comfit was going to spend the rest of her life in a Dark Forest prison. 

He said he wanted to make an _ example _ out of her. 

At that, one of the head nurses told the others to stop telling me horror stories or I’d never get the rest I needed to recover. Not that I really needed rest or recovery.

But the Bog King. There was a _ real _ nightmare.

He had complete control of all the monsters in the Dark Forest, and they were  _ all  _ afraid of him.  _ He took on Mirabelle Comfit and won. _ No one in the Fairy Kingdom had ever seen him and lived to talk about it - even when dealing with the Fairy Kingdom in his official capacity, he only ever sent emissaries, which suited King Dagda just fine.

_ He  _ was the one I needed to look out for.

I’d tried to do some research on the Dark Forest before I’d left, but the nurses didn't have any ideas about that, and I couldn’t find very much in the palace library. According to our own emissaries, the Bog King lived in a castle dug out from the trunk of a massive oak tree. I’d only have to travel east to find it; or at least, those were the most detailed instructions I had. There weren’t any maps of the Dark Forest available in the Fairy Kingdom. I’d known relations were bad - I was  _ glad  _ relations were bad with a pack of monsters. But I hadn’t realized how hard that would make it to get information I needed. 

The thought of our poor relations hung on me for a moment.  Hadn’t Marianne said something about primrose smuggling being seen as grounds for war?

I thought about turning back, when I remembered what I’d said. 

I would do  _ anything _ for Dawn.

There was a whisper behind me, and I whipped around. Nothing there. Just the mushrooms. I looked again. There were a  _ lot  _ of mushrooms. But wait, that was fine, that was how Marianne had gotten us out before. Nothing suspicious. I was fine. 

I plowed on ahead, moving along stable roots and staying low, trusting that I would find the castle if I just stayed east. I occasionally heard things - creatures rumbling through the shadows, speaking to each other in their weird, guttural voices. I stayed low and quiet, and sure enough, I evaded notice.

Something poked me in the back. 

I screamed - no, no I didn’t, I shouted, like a man who hadn’t been scared at all and had definitely been prepared for anything - and whipped around. 

A creature crouched behind me. It was shorter than me, which was surprising, as hardly any living things beside insects were shorter than me. This was a mammal of some sort, with ears the size of its head, and a sharp, pointed face. Its fur was all white, which seemed odd for a place like the Dark Forest, but its thin, agile tail had no fur at all. 

It cocked its head at me. I looked at it, but it just sat there watching me. After a few tense moments I turned back around. I felt it touch my back again, but this time it didn’t poke me; it grabbed at my backpack. 

“Hey!” I yelled as I grabbed at it, but the thing had already gone into my bag and snatched one of the petals. It bounded away into the high branches. “Wait!” I yelled. “I need that!”

It stopped and turned around. It’s eyes were almost pure black, and they were fixed on me. It was actually waiting for me- could it understand what I was saying?

“I need that back,” I said slowly, as I raised my hands up in front of me, non-threateningly. “I’m on a mission. I need to find Mirabelle Comfit, and I need  _ that _ to make a Love Potion.”

The thing’s ears shot straight up, and it leapt backwards off the branch and scampered into the darkness beyond.

Oh. Oh wait. That was a  _ crime.  _ I smacked my forehead. Shoot. I shouldn’t have admitted that to the first strange creature I saw. I’d have to work quickly, before that thing came back with guards or monsters or whatever it was going to come back with.

I started off in the direction I’d been heading, but the creature bounded back out of the darkness toward me. It stopped and beckoned.

“You want me to follow you?” I asked. Maybe it was a criminal creature that was okay with crimes? It squeaked, nodded, and left again into the darkness, more slowly this time.

I gave chase.

The creature leapt between branches and vines, skittering between wide and small gaps alike as if it had been built for it. I wasn’t as agile as this thing was - I doubted it was physically possible for me to reach that level of skill - but I was  _ fast. _ I pulled myself up onto lower branches, leaping and catching onto vines only a few seconds behind it.

We moved like that for a half hour or more. My practice with Dawn had prepared me all too well for chasing an agile target above my head, but as we pressed on I began to wear out. It finally stopped short before a fallen, rotting log. The log’s interior was hollow and had enough space to walk through, but there was no reason to go through it. The other end hung over a sheer cliff, off the stable earth and over a massive gorge. A straight drop down. Fog covered the bottom of the gorge completely. 

I looked at the creature, but it didn’t look back at me. Instead, it ran down through the center of the empty log, and flung itself out the other side, and plummeted into the fog below.

“Hey!” I yelled, and ran down the length of the log. I don’t know what I thought I’d do, but that didn’t matter in the moment. I peered down into the fog.

There was nothing. Nothing but empty white - not even an imprint of where the thing had fallen through.

“Little buddy?” I yelled down. I got on my knees and carefully stuck my head over the side. Maybe he was clinging to the underside of the log? Maybe there was a secret ladder?

From far below me, there was an impatient squeak.

I considered flinging myself off the log, as the thing had done. So far it hadn’t taken me through any path I couldn’t handle. But instinct won out, and I didn’t have the nerve to throw myself out into a featureless abyss.

I took the rope out of my backpack, secured it to an uneven jut of wood at the bottom of the log, and lowered myself down.

Only a short distance lower I could barely see my hands in front of my face. I inched further down. It was slow going, but the animal squeaked occasionally and I could hear it getting louder. 

Oddly, the fog began to clear as I got lower. As I approached the end of the rope, I could see the roots of a dying tree below me. The fog was so thick I couldn’t see the trunk. The creature danced on one of the larger roots, waving its arms to get my attention. Below was a steady flow of water, wide enough that it looked like a river.

If I had leapt off, I probably would have survived, but it would not have been a comfortable landing. 

I touched down next to the creature and wrapped the loose end of the rope around a smaller root so I could find it again. The creature looked at me, checked to see that I was ready to keep going, and took off again. But didn't go very far. A short distance away, it gestured to a small circular opening in a cluster of roots.

“Is she in there?” I asked. It nodded, and then climbed inside and wriggled forward. 

I wasn’t sure I would fit, but I followed suit. It was a tight squeeze at first, but the tunnel opened up quickly. And then sloped downward.

I managed not to scream as I slid into the darkness, but it took effort. Eventually the tunnel gave way entirely, and I crashed through something feeble before I thudded onto flat stone. 

I needed to stop falling in the Dark Forest. That was my spring resolution. No more Dark Forest falls.

I looked around and tried to get my bearings.

The room I had fallen into was massive, with high ceilings and no visible exits. Massive, empty cages hung from the ceiling, covered in metal spikes. 

This was a Dark Forest prison. We were close.

 The creature was nearby, waving me over to a hatch in the floor. Gentle white light glowed out of it, and I scrambled over as fast as I could. The creature opened the hatch, and I looked down.

It took me several moments to understand what I was seeing.

A glowing white orb seemed to float in the room below us like a distant planet, massive and glowing white. For long seconds I couldn’t comprehend it. How could they have fit such a massive thing into this space? How long would I have to fall to reach it?

Then creature shoved past me and into the room. It stood, below the- well. It wasn’t a planet. With the creature crouched next to it, it was obviously much smaller than I’d anticipated, and much closer. 

I lowered myself into the room, embarrassed by my complete misunderstanding of scale. It was barely a drop from the ceiling before my feet hit the floor. Now closer, I looked at the glowing orb again.

It was a spider web, constructed in a perfect sphere, suspended on several small branches leading onto a central thick spiral stem. It wasn’t too hard to imagine this as some arcanist’s staff, though it might’ve been a little unbalanced to wield it like one. As I looked closer, something inside it moved.

I flinched backward, but the creature beside me looked delighted.

“Imp!” came a voice from the orb. It was the strangest voice I had ever heard - not unappealing, necessarily, but there was a warbling quality to it, and I couldn’t think of what its owner was doing with their throat to make it sound like that. “Imp, come here, let mommy see you!”

The creature, Imp, leapt forward and held itself up against the central trunk, notably avoiding the web. 

“What have you brought me, darling?” Imp waved my primrose petal in front of the orb - wait, I hadn’t gotten that back? The voice squealed in delight, and  _ something  _ zipped around inside the orb.

“Wait, that’s mine!” I yelled, and ran forward.

“Oh? Imp, who’s this? What have you brought me?”

Imp made a series of gestures - gesturing a tear drop shape, smacking a paw over its eyes, stumbling around, and finally forming a heart with its tail. 

“I see. You want a Love Potion?” the orb asked.

I was close enough now to see inside it. The orb, maybe as big as my head, contained a tiny woman the size of one of my fingers. Her skin was a powdery, near translucent blue and she sparkled like stars burned throughout her.

“How did you-  _ What _ are you-”

“I’m Mirabelle Comfit, this is my familiar, Imp, that’s a primrose petal, and with a face like yours you’re not getting a girlfriend any other way. Basic logic.”

Imp, the little creature, squeaked out a hideous little laugh.

“ _ You’re _ Mirabelle Comfit?” I asked. “Why do you…  _ look _ like that? I thought you were a fairy? Marianne said you used to work at the castle.”

“ _ Marianne? _ ” she asked, as she leaned in, interested. “So this is a  _ royal _ affair? You know, King Dagda may be a fair ruler, but I doubt he’d consent to marrying off his crown princess to  _ someone like you _ , if you quite catch my meaning.”

“That’s not- I’m not in love with Marianne!” 

“Then  _ why _ are you  _ here _ ?”

She looked at me with her half-translucent, sparkling eyes. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful like a falling star, not like a person. More than anything else, Mirabelle Comfit was _eerie._

“Why do you look like that?” I asked again.

She tittered and rolled her eyes. “I was trying to make a Universal Beauty Potion,” she said. “Everyone who looked at me would think I was the most beautiful person they’d ever seen, informed by their own aesthetic standards. Needless to say it backfired. Though, I still think I look fairly fetching, don’t you?” She drifted upward, toward the barrier of the web. I could see her even more clearly now, and every new detail about her appearance was distressing. Her hair drifted upward, but it didn’t move like hair, it moved like the rest of her starry flesh. She wore no clothes, but a tall dark crown melded to her brow. Worst of all, her legs no longer moved separately and were fused together into a single fleshy point, like some hideous celestial snake. She placed her fingers against the web, her long, pointed fingers, and looked at me. Her eyes were open too wide to look beautiful now, despite the stars inside them, and one eye twitched as she spoke.

“Don’t ignore me.”

I broke into a sweat. It wasn’t a threat, technically, but it scared me anyway. “I’m not ignoring you!” 

“ _ Tell me why you’re here. _ ”

“I want a Love Potion! No, sorry,  _ two _ Love Potions!”

She blinked, confused by my answer. “Why would you want  _ two _ ?” she asked. “Are you selling them? Because unless you have buyers lined up  _ let me assure you-” _

“No,” I interrupted. “I want one because I’m in love with Dawn, but she’s not in love with me, which is kinda  _ crazy _ actually, because we spend  _ so _ much time together and I do  _ so much for her _ , and I want the other for my friend Roland, who’s in love with Marianne.”

She smirked. “So it  _ is _ a royal affair. What are you offering?”

That stopped me flat.

“Offering?” I asked.

“Offering,” she repeated. “As payment.”

“I didn’t…” I dug through my backpack, pulling up everything I had. A compass, rations, a bedroll, the other primrose petal. I didn’t have anything I could give her. “I only brought the primrose petals for the potions, I didn’t think-”

“ _ Petals? _ ” she asked, wide eyes lunging forward again. “Petals  _ plural? _ ”

“Only two,” I said. “For the two Love Potions.”

She snorted. “You don’t need  _ two _ Love Potions. One potion has about five thousand uses. Unless you have plans for a harem the size of a continent, you and your friend should be just fine.”

“I’m sorry, it has  _ what _ ?”

“Five thousand uses per bottle." She waved her hand dismissively. "That’s not important. What  _ is _ important is payment.” She steepled her fingers and looked at me with empty, glittering eyes. “You give me one petal to make the potion, and one petal as payment. My darling Imp leads you back to border safe and sound, and you live happily ever after with your lady love. Though...” she paused, and looked up at me through thoughtful eyes. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a Luck Potion? Love Potions can have  _ unforeseen consequences. _ ”

My head reeled.

“I’m sorry, could you back over the number of uses? I’m kinda stuck on that.”

“Five thousand,” she said quickly. “Primrose petals are very powerful, and diluting something like that down to make a single use potion is beyond any magical technology available.  _ Yet. _ I had a few blueprints I was working on before  _ that fateful day. _ ”

“Okay. Okay, that’s fine. I give you the petals, you give me the potion, Imp takes me home. Right? That’s the deal?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Okay. How do I get rid of the potion when I’m done with it?”

She laughed, a dizzying sound like a comet through wind chimes. “Why would you  _ want  _ to?” she asked. “What if you fall in love with someone else?”

“I wouldn’t! Dawn’s the only one for me!”

“Oh? Well then, what if someone else uses a Love Potion on Dawn and you need to  _ fix _ her?”

I- well, I hadn’t considered that. Roland wouldn’t do that to Dawn - not when he had Marianne - but who knew what other creeps were lurking, waiting for a chance to force my poor sweet Dawn to love them? I couldn’t let that happen. I’d have to keep the Love Potion on hand. To protect her.

“All right, I see your point,” I said.

“Plus! You can use it on your enemies! Make them fall in love with something hideous! Or make them watch as their spouse falls for someone else! Or make them fall in love with someone they can never have and watch as their life falls apart!” Mirabelle Comfit gave a hideous giggle and zipped around her orb. “I used to  _ love _ doing that! Before I got locked up, on that  _ fateful day…” _

“What’s  _ wrong _ with you?” I asked, then realized what I’d said and clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

She fixed cold eyes on me with a flat expression.“Oh no, it’s  _ fine _ . I can tell you’re  _ really nice _ , as a general rule. That little outburst was the exception. That’s the whole reason you’re here, isn't it?" She gave me a wicked smile with too many teeth. "Because of how  _ nice  _ you are.”

“I _ am _ nice!”

“I’m sure. Do we have a deal or not?”

I looked into her dark eyes, and down at Imp, who nodded emphatically. “Fine,” I said.

“Deal!” she squeaked with delight and held a hand out expectantly. “The petals.”

I pointed at the spider web orb and raised an eyebrow.

“It’s fine. You can reach in, I can’t reach out. Otherwise I’d never get any food in here.”

That made sense. I took the crumpled petal from Imp, and the other from the floor next to my pack where I’d lain everything out, and I reached through the webbing.

It didn’t feel like anything, but the sight was terrifying. My hand simply ended at the wrist, and inside the orb a tiny hand holding two tiny petals appeared on the near wall. I almost screamed and yanked my hand back out, but Mirabelle Comfit reached forward and snatched the petals out of my hand before I could. 

“Perfect! I’ll have your potion ready in two minutes, just you wait. Oh! Wait wait wait! Do you have any requests?”

“Requests?”

“Anything you want your lover to do. Sing, fawn over you, cook for you. You’re forcing her to love you anyway, you may as well get what you can out of it.”

“That’s  _ horrible _ . You can  _ do _ that?”

“Of course!” She chirped as she flew a double loop-de-loop. She was a bit like Dawn in her excitability - no, no, no, that was the worst thought anyone ever had, unthink that,  _ unthink that _ . 

“Near the end I was able to make one that would make your lovers  _ kill _ for you. Ah, those were the times.”

“No, god, no, I don’t want anything like that. I just want Dawn to love me however she would normally.”

Mirabelle Comfit fake gagged and crossed her arms. “You come all this way and you won’t even give me something interesting to work with. What’s the point of even  _ making _ a potion if I can’t push boundaries a little bit? If I can’t make something  _ new _ out of it?”

“Look,” I said, close to losing patience, “do whatever you want with your own petal, okay? All I want is a simple love potion. Please, just do that for me.”

She sniffed, but nodded. “Fine. If _you_ don’t want any specifications then I’ll make it my own way. But if you come back here unsatisfied then I’m going to remind you that _ I  _ offered and  _ you _ turned it down. Now please look away, I’m going to begin.”

I turned my back and sat down next to Imp, but turned and looked out of the corner of my eye. It was hard to see from this angle and through the webbing, but I could see enough. One of the petals floated into the air, crystalized, then twisted into dust. The colour drained from it and swirled around, forming an oblong shell. The entire orb flashed orange, then purple, and suddenly it looked as if there were multiple of her - a half-dozen Mirabelle Comfits, falling and whirling in a buoyant sea of colour. 

The orb exploded. I screamed as I was launched forward onto my face by a near blinding light. She cackled behind me as the light abated.

“If you think  _ making  _ the potion is dangerous… wait ‘til you  _ use _ it.” The words implied a warning, but her tone implied something very different, as if she might have been drooling as she said it. Lust. Desperate enthusiasm. Unhinged joy at the thought of what might go wrong.

I wished she would finish faster so I could leave. Nothing in the world was more comforting to me right now than the knowledge that I when I returned to the Fairy Kingdom, Mirabelle Comfit would stay locked up right here. I might not have all the details, but there was no doubt in my mind that she needed to be kept away from the rest of civilization. 

“It’s done,” she said. “You can turn around now.”

I did. She was holding a vial, the shape and size of a teardrop. Dark violet tendrils wrapped around it, and soft pink light glowed out of its center. It was capped with a golden rosebud, moments from bloom. I don’t know what I had expected it to look like, but it was surprisingly pleasant to look at.

“Here are the rules,” she said. “Inside there’s a quantity of dust. Throw the dust into the eyes of the one you love, and they will fall madly, completely in love with the next living thing that they see. If they fall in love with the wrong person - I can’t understand how that would _ possibly _ happen but  _ if _ \- apply the dust again, make sure to stand in their line of sight properly, and-”

“Dust in her eyes, be the next thing she sees. Got it.”

“-and then kill any unfortunate witness,” she finished.

She ignored the look I gave her, and reached her arm out with the potion.

“You’ll have to reach in and get it,” she said. “I already told you, I can’t reach out.”

Right. I wasn’t looking forward to this. I reached my hand into the orb and tried not to flinch at the sight of my horrible, shrunken appendage. I couldn’t bear it, so I closed my eyes.

I felt, rather than saw, as she pushed the potion into my hand. 

“You’ll have to pull,” she said. “And put your strength into it. It’s harder to take things out of this prison than it is to put them in.”

The weight felt colossal. I braced my foot against the wooden stem holding up the orb, and pulled. Imp tugged on my back, and we strained against the pressure.

It came free. There was a feeling of release that… didn’t quite _end_ when it was supposed to. The weight of the potion came free into my hand, but then kept going. It slid forward and pushed into my lap, knocking me back.

My hand was free. I had the potion. I opened my eyes, to see Mirabelle Comfit, larger than any fairy I’d ever seen, smiling down at me.

“Thank you, Sunny,” she said. “Consider your payment complete.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why Sunny was so careful on that log considering that he's immune to fall damage, but fuck it, when has Sunny ever made sense
> 
> Speaking of not making sense, in the movie, as much as I love it, I have NO idea what the deal is with Sugar Plum
> 
> Why is she the only one who can make Love Potions?  
> How did she end up in the Dark Forest?  
> Why does the Bog King get to keep her in his prisons, despite her seemingly coming from the Fairy Kingdom?  
> How does she know Imp?  
> Why Does She Look Like That?
> 
> I'm not saying my fic answers all or any of those questions  
> But I like my version and there's nothing anyone can do about it >:)
> 
> (also imp is her familiar in this one because they are both unhinged chaos entities and I cannot be persuaded on the matter)


	7. Bog 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how i'm putting these up so fast but i'm gonna ride this wave until it drowns me
> 
> also  
> i'm a simple bitch and i need attention to live  
> give me comments or i will perish cold and alone on the streets of london, surrounded by burnt matchsticks

 “A message from the mushrooms, sire.”

I sat upright on my throne. Yesterday the mushrooms had reported that no petals had been taken by the mystery intruders, though my servants had predictably bungled the message. The primroses were almost completely wiped out, only a tiny patch left on the southern border needed clearing. But until they were eradicated I had to remain vigilant.

“Relay the message,” I said. The larger one, Stuff, a horned frog looking creature with ears like fans, spoke.

“A tall chef is into shark storage. Metal’s hissing.”

I sighed and walked past them without a word. Stuff ran forward to keep babbling, and I knocked her out of my way with the butt of my staff. She only came up to my ankles, but I’d still managed to trip over her more times than I could count.

“You know when you have a shark, but you don’t know where to put it? Well, there’s a chef here with the same problem-” she kept going even after I’d left the room. I shot across the bridge outside my castle and came to the last in the line of mushrooms.

“What is the message?” I asked. I remembered to keep my voice loud, though it was difficult to muster up the energy. I’d hardly slept over the last few days, constantly alert for any sign of a crisis.

The mushroom whispered.

“A small elf is in the Dark Forest. Petals missing.”

I let out a scream of frustration. I nearly brought the heavy end of my staff down on the mushroom’s head before I remembered that it was not one of my hardy, pain-loving attendants. I struck into the dirt beside it, and sped back into the castle. 

“Organize a team for a seek and destroy mission immediately!” I shouted into the empty air of my throne room. I didn’t worry about whether I would be heard. The dead wood of my old oak castle would amplify and spread the sound to anyone inside. Scuttles and skitters inside the wall answered me. My subjects were on the move. “There’s an elf with primrose petals in _my_ forest! Find him! Rip them from his grasp! Make him regret crossing _your_ King!” The walls, and the subjects inside them, clicked and buzzed their approval. 

“Brutus! Throg!” Two of my larger subjects, nearly up to my shoulders and made entirely of muscle, appeared at the entrance to the throne room. I loved these two, as much as I could love any of my subjects. They weren’t quite smart enough to cause me trouble, and their strength would frighten any creature with enough brain to feel fear. “Guard the high security prison. This _elf_ cannot be allowed access to-”

There was a sound from below the castle, deep in the dungeonous roots. A sound that had haunted my nightmares for the past three years. A high pitched, heartless laugh, drawn out longer than any living being should have the air for. My breath came up short.

“She’s out,” I whispered. “He let her _out.”_

“Change of plan!” I screamed. “Secure the castle! No one in or out!” I clutched my staff tight, held it close to my body, and flew out of the throne room, down one of the smaller corridors, down a service staircase, down, down. My thin wings weren’t suited to distance, but this tight pursuit was what I was _made_ for. I sped along narrower and narrower corridors, turned, dived, maneuvered without losing speed. 

There, in the central chamber of the dungeon, just above where she _should_ have been, where she _should_ have rotted for all time and a day, was Mirabelle Comfit.

She was more hideous than I remembered. Eyes too wide, like a tarsier leaping from the shadows. She was a predator in the dark, and she had pulled the night sky into herself as camouflage. Legs, hair, and skin were unnecessary and thus discarded. She grinned, a monster’s grin with too many teeth. 

“I’m _out_ , Boggy,” she said. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

I looked at the room around me, desperate for some way to turn _something_ to my advantage. Large iron cages hung various lengths from the ceiling - they wouldn’t hold her - and a large, curving staircase led down into the depths of the dungeon, where she hung in the air like a patient spider. 

I needed to be behind her. Grab the orb prison, trap her inside of it. She wanted to be behind me. Incapacitate any subjects who got in her way and escape. 

We were at an impasse.

“Comfit,” I said, projecting my voice enough that she could hear me, that the subjects in the walls could pick it up. “What have you done?”

“I got _out_ , Boggy darling. Try to keep up with the conversation, I don’t like to repeat myself.”

“How?” I asked. The wall to my right whispered scratches, and the sounds shifted downward, following the path of the stairs.

“Some lovesick little elf boy pulled me out. I gave him a Love Potion for his efforts.”

“You _what?_ ” Fury prompted me to charge her, but I forced myself still. I didn’t know what magic she was holding in, waiting to trap me with. I couldn’t give her the advantage so easily. I growled instead, and held my ground. “Comfit, so help me, I will see you suffer for this.”

She snorted. “How? Will you throw me in prison? Will you lock my cage in a bigger cage? If you had anything you could do to me you’d have done it by now. Speaking of which, would you kindly get out of my way? I’m trying to leave, see, and you’re blocking the door.”

I tried to understand her plan. What was she hiding? Comfit wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t have called my attention if she didn’t have a plan. What magic did she have stashed away? What ingredients could she find in this dungeon? Where was her horrible little familiar?

Neither of us moved an inch. Over the long seconds, there were no fireballs or waves of death.

If she had magic prepared, either it couldn’t be used on an expecting target, or she just couldn’t use it _yet_ \- maybe it would only affect the area around her? Or maybe it would hone in on my movement. Was it a bluff? Was she trying to get past me using my own fear as a tool?

I stared into her predator’s eyes and gripped my staff tighter.

She looked irritated. Like this was some fun game and I wasn’t playing along properly. Good. That was the only expression that was safe with Comfit. 

There was movement behind her. I kept my eyes trained on hers and looked only with my peripherals. 

One of my goblins, a tiny creature called Dreg, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He had taken hold of the stem of the orb prison, and was slowly creeping up behind her. He’d be on her soon. I needed to keep her distracted.

“Where’s your hideous pet?” I asked. “There may not be anything I can do to you, but I have a few ideas for that little beast.”

Her smirk darkened into something more serious. “That’s a fun joke, Boggy Woggy, but if you harm my Imp then we both know I’d have to stop holding back.”

Dreg crept closer, sharp claws wrapped around the very bottom of the stem.

Just one more moment. 

“Are you worried about him?” I sneered at her. “Don’t worry. I’d make sure you were there to watch every last thing I did to him.”

Dreg lunged with the orb, and arced it down over her head. But as he stepped forward, a circle of orange light appeared on the ground around her. Crackles of orange energy shot up his legs, and Dreg seized up and screamed in pain. Comfit whirled around, but it was too late. The heavy orb cell, already on a path downward, only needed gravity to complete its purpose. The orb hit Comfit and with a shriek and a flash of white light, she vanished into it.

There was no time to celebrate.

Dreg collapsed inside the glowing orange glyph, and the orange energy now seared through his chest and face. As he screamed, the light became brighter.

I ran forward to push him out of the circle.

The orange light shifted white. The energy was audible now, an ear-piercing squeal even louder than Dreg’s screaming. 

The circle exploded.

I hit the stone steps behind me, all hard angles against my spine. The entire castle quaked and swayed. Fissures cracked along the walls, all from the ground up. Dreg, closest to the impact, was launched into a far wall, which splintered on impact. He thudded to the floor and didn’t move.

The circle glowed white for another moment, then faded without a trace. The castle creaked, but stopped shaking.

The only sounds left in the dungeon were Comfit and Dreg. The orb cell was unaffected by the explosion, and Comfit screamed and cursed as she pounded on the webbing walls. On the other side of the room, Dreg groaned in pain. 

I shuffled over to him as quickly as I could. 

He was bruised and dusty, but there were no scorch marks or signs of blood. Even so, his eyes were unfocused and he writhed against my grasp. Whatever this was, it wasn’t from the explosion.

I marched back, still aching from impact, and snatched the stem of the orb prison off the floor. I shook it hard, rattling the prisoner. “What have you done to him?”

“Ah! The- the explosion was just a bombast reaction, and that guy is- it’s a modification on a Waking Nightmare Potion! Stop shaking! I’ll talk!”

“I know you’ll talk. Of course you’ll talk. _You can’t stop talking_ .” I shook harder. “I want you to answer my questions, and if you’re not answering I want you to _keep your mouth shut._ Am I clear?”

“You’re clear! You’re clear! Stop shaking!”

I stopped shaking. Inside the orb, Comfit oriented herself, then looked up at me, mercifully silent.

“Waking Nightmare Potion. How do I undo it?”

“You don’t. It wears off on its own after a few hours.”

I shook the orb again, hard.

“How _dare you_ use a potion like that on one of my subjects?”

“It was supposed to get _you_ ! It’s not my fault it hit that sap! I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but this is _obviously not how my plan was supposed to go!_ ”

"What do you mean,  _your plan_?"

She pressed herself against the web, hands clawed. "I was going to trap you in that circle, drain all of the energy out of your body, and use it to knock down this whole ugly castle. I'd leave you with just enough energy to survive, and your last moments would be nightmare visions as you suffocated in the rubble. _That's what you deserve, Boggy Woggy._ " She flung herself back from the glass and tried to pull out her hair in frustration. " _But then that weakling idiot ruined everything! He didn't even have enough energy to destroy this room!"_

I tried not to show it as my breath caught in my chest. That would fuel my nightmares for the next few years. 

I tucked it away. I had time to be afraid later, there were more important things right now.

“Where did you get the materials?”

She stopped what she was doing, half so she could look at me like I was an idiot, half because she'd realized that she didn't have any hair to pull. “Imp brought them! Where else would I get anything?”

“Don’t lie to me!” I shook the orb cell again. “I know you wouldn’t risk your little pet getting trapped. How did you get the materials?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, silent and smiling with her predator teeth.

“Boggy woggy, you didn’t think I _just_ got out, did you? I’ve been out for a _while_ now. _Hours._ Plenty of time for my baby to get me what I needed.”

I took a moment to process, then laughed in her face. “You’ve been out for _hours_ planning your little escape, and I caught you immediately? I thought you were supposed to be competent.”

She said nothing, but gave me a look of pure, impotent rage. 

I stood upright. “Medic!” I called into the empty room. My subjects skittered. Slower than usual. The walls must not have been good protection against the blast. A moment later two little heads peeked up from the bottom of the staircase.

“Dreg got hit. Find him a soft place to rest for a few hours. He may thrash. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

The two nodded and rushed forward to collect their fallen comrade. 

“And tell him he’s getting a hero’s feast when he wakes up!”

One of the medics chirped a confirmation. I turned back to Comfit.

“Where’s the Love Potion?”

Comfit smiled wickedly. “The elf has it. And with all the time I gave him, he’s probably back in the Fairy Kingdom by now. You’ll never find him.”

I shouted out my frustration and shook the orb prison as hard as I could.

This was the worst-case scenario. A Love Potion, unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.

I stopped shaking, and waited until Comfit’s eyes uncrossed. “Why did you give it to him? What were you trying to achieve?”

She shook away the dizziness. “I thought it would be fun, obviously.”

That tracked. If there was one consistency for Comfit, it was doing destructive things for the entertainment value alone. 

But if that was true, something didn’t add up. A _lot_ of things didn’t add up. Comfit had said the elf was ‘some love-sick boy,’ but that wasn’t her style. It wasn’t chaotic enough. Maybe she’d give a potion to someone like that, but she wouldn’t wait in a cell for hours to make sure he got away. More importantly, no normal elf would break into the Dark Forest’s highest security prison over a crush. 

“Who was the elf?” 

She shrugged. “I think his name was ‘Sunshine’ or something? Not anyone I’d ever heard of.”

“Is he involved with organized crime? What connections does he have?”

“I didn’t ask. He seemed perfectly normal to me.”

Perfectly normal. _Comfit_ thought he was _perfectly normal_. For all I knew he levitated in, speaking in tongues and soaked in blood.

I moved on.

“Why did he want a Love Potion? Is he some chaos-fiend like you? Or was he looking for a profit?”

She smiled. “I already told you. _He’s in love._ He just wants to use the potion on a very specific person, that’s all.”

There. I was on to something.

“Who was his target?”

Comfit _beamed_ , a manic expression that only came when she was contemplating mass chaos. Whoever it was, I had to stop this. 

“Who’s the target?” I demanded. 

She giggled, and pressed herself up against the web. “What will you give me if I tell you?”

“If you _don’t_ tell me, I will have goblins take shifts shaking this damned orb for the next _year_ . They’ll line up for the privilege. _Tell me._ ”

She pouted, but after a long moment of consideration realized that I was serious. “There’s _two_ targets.”

“Two?” I blurted, too shocked to maintain composure. What kind of monster was I dealing with?

“ _Both_ princesses.”

Both… I reeled. My knees nearly gave out under me.

Two princesses. Was this elf planning a coup? Elves had been subjugated under fairy rule for years, but even I had never considered that a Love Potion could be used for a revolution. 

This elf… _Sunshine,_ or whatever his name was, had broken the laws of the peace treaty between my Forest and the Fairy Kingdom. I would be well within my rights to bring an army and demand that the king surrender the horrid little creature to me. But, if he was some kind of anti-fairy revolutionary, the Fairy Kingdom would probably want him gone and dealt with just as much as I did. They wouldn’t be able to release him into my custody. 

I weighed my options. The immediate priority would be isolating the royal family, making sure that they couldn’t be coerced into loving anyone against their political interests. If I could send my fastest messenger and tell the royal family to barricade themselves in the palace…

That wouldn’t work. If this elf had a plan to get to both of the princesses, then he must have connections inside the palace, or access to some secret entrance. Maybe he worked for them directly.

There was nothing for it. It would hurt relations, but I’d have to shelter them here, whether or not they would come willingly. Another generation of closed borders with the Fairy Kingdom would be better than a neighboring elf tyrant with a Love Potion at his disposal.

I looked down at Comfit. I almost asked why she would give a potion to someone so clearly dangerous and unstable, but that question answered itself. 

“So?” she asked. “What do I get for this incredibly useful information?”

I ignored her, and put the orb back into its narrow space in the hatch below the floor.

“Hey! Boggy! Don’t ignore me! What do I get?”

I lowered the hatch, locked it, and flew upstairs to my throne room. 

“Bog! Don’t ignore me! Don’t you _dare_ ignore me!” Comfit screamed, but her voice faded quickly as I put distance between us. I had a royal kidnapping to arrange. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the movie, Bog knows an elf stole a love potion, so he goes:  
> "Only one logical course of action, time to kidnap some princesses."  
> which?  
> I'm not saying it's the worst plan in the world, but I don't see how he got from A to B on that one. I'm sure it made perfect sense to him.  
> Now it can make sense to me too.
> 
> (also Sunny broke his spring resolution and fell down on his way out of the Dark Forest. He did, I promise, you didn't see it but it happened. He was very embarrassed about it and Imp roasted him and he deserved it.)


	8. Dawn 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, check this out:
> 
> DON'T give me comments!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> did you see that  
> i just reversed your psychologies  
> now you HAVE to give me comments  
> check and mate

 

I was able to convince Marianne to come with me to the Elf Festival, but only by pleading and begging and giving her my _best_ dewey-pleading-begging-eyes and threatening to eat an elf-sized portion of cotton candy.

That is, for the record, not a serving of cotton candy suitable for elven proportions, but rather a serving of cotton candy roughly the size of an elf, which I had attempted to eat once before, only to be stopped halfway through when I had gotten a horrible stomach-ache and poor Marianne was forced to nurse me back to health. I assured her that I would manage to eat it in its entirety this year unless she was there to stop me, and that did the trick.

My motivations were selfish, of course. What fun would the Elf Festival be with Sunny incapacitated and my darling older sister in a miserable, loveless slump? But, I reasoned, if anything could get anyone _out_ of a miserable, loveless slump, it would be an Elf Festival, and of course my charming company.

We arrived together with Daddy, though he and Marianne were hardly on speaking terms at the moment, and I sided with Marianne, because it wasn’t fair at all to expect her to be civil and responsible, _and_ deal with Horrible Roland, _and_ _more importantly_ to deal with me. 

Standing together more-or-less as a family, we made a very good show of royal support. Elves pointed at us and whispered among themselves - not the mean sort of disapproving whispers that Marianne always got in a tizzy about, but the nice kind when somebody is very excited to see someone and can’t help but admire what they’re wearing. I could tell the difference, having been the subject of the latter any number of times in my life and the former hardly ever.

I missed Sunny. I hoped he would get better soon. The elves would treat me much more casually when I was with him, as a friend of Sunny’s first and a princess second. Being a princess obviously had its perks, but to place it above Sunny’s friendship was impossible. Never mind that every ball I could ever want to attend was thrown in my own front room, without Sunny I couldn’t enjoy any of them.

I had gone to visit him this morning, hoping he’d improved enough to enjoy the festival with me, only to find that Roland occupied the medical center alone. He said that Sunny had been discharged earlier, but I couldn’t believe that. If Sunny had been discharged, he would have come to see me! I couldn’t understand the mechanism behind it, but I was certain that Roland had lied him away somehow. Was that possible? To lie so hard a person vanished right out of existence? Regardless, I hoped Sunny would vanish right back _into_ existence in the very near future, or I wouldn’t get to casually banter with _any_ of the stall vendors this year.

The ferris wheel turned slowly, and in the central stage area a band of elven performers sang folk songs, and line dancers stepped in time in the dancing area in front of the stage. I tugged Marianne along by one of her unfashionable arm guards, which she _always_ wore for some reason, as if wearing a sword in public didn’t sufficiently convey that _yes, she works out_ , and _yes, with swords_ and _yes, you should be scared of how cool and strong she is_. She followed where I tugged her, and it warmed my heart. We both knew I couldn’t force her to do anything, and the fact that she so regularly jumped to do my bidding anyway made me love her all the more. I pointed at the line dancers, and she gave me a flat look.

“No.”

Ah, so much for jumping to do my bidding.

“ _Marianne~_ ” I pouted, and stamped my foot. “I can’t dance with Sunny because he’s not here, and Daddy will get mad if I dance with a guard, and _you’ll_ get mad if I dance with _Daddy_ , and I don’t want to dance with a stranger, so _you have to_.”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s the law,” I said gravely.

She rolled her eyes and pulled me into line with her. 

I had heard any number of times, from the hoards of people that watched our lives, that I was the cute one and Marianne the competent one. There was no denying her competence, or even my lack of it, but I couldn’t understand anyone who couldn’t understand how adorable Marianne was. She used to dress much more cutely, sure, and we shared dresses and makeup and put flowers in each others’ hair, but the kind of cuteness she had grown into was much more genuine and endearing. Her insistence on grumbling and pouting when I forced her to have fun was cute enough, but it was only amplified by her inevitable unstated insistence that she had agreed for _her own_ reasons that had _nothing to do with you, Dawn,_ and _I just felt like line dancing, honestly_. To watch Marianne was to understand the inherent cuteness of a cactus asking for cuddles. She could wrench a ‘D’awwww’ from even the most cold-hearted of criminals, and anyone who couldn’t see that deserved to be locked up themselves.

The dance started.

We stepped in time and twirled together. We towered over the rest of the dancers, which was unfortunate but of course unavoidable. Marianne’s glum demeanor showed in her dancing and drew even more attention than her height. She barely lifted her arms above her hips, and though she twirled and stepped on cue, it took her longer to fully rotate than it should have.

If Marianne - _Marianne!_ Who would practice swordplay for twelve hours and fly laps another six! - found herself incapable of _dancing,_ then her slump was much more serious than I had realized. 

Down the line, another unmistakably tall, fairy figure entered the dance. Roland! Horrible Roland, the cad! I knew his plan at once. He was going to dance down the line until he and Marianne were forced, through the gentle, entropic nature of line dancing, to dance together. Luckily, I had a cunning plan that he would never foresee.

“Hey Marianne, Roland’s here. Go get me some cotton candy so you can avoid him.”

Marianne’s face went white, but quickly reverted to the flat look that was usually reserved for shenanigans. She didn’t argue and flew away to get me my cotton candy. Or, at least, that’s what I hoped she was doing.

Before Roland had the opportunity to realize the cunning and intricate nature of my deception, I intercepted him. I stepped out of line, floated over to his current partner, and asked if I might cut in. The poor elf lady seemed very confused - was my interruption considered poor form in line dancing? Who could keep track of things like that? - but agreed and stepped away. 

Roland looked rather bewildered. I kept my self-congratulatory chuckling internal, but only through a great force of will. 

“Roland,” I said, smugly.

“ _You’re_ not Marianne,” he said loudly, and looked around himself, as if she might sneak up behind him.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” I continued. I ignored his chicanery and twirled to the beat.

Roland missed his designated twirl. “Wow! You’re _not_ Marianne! If someone was expecting you to be Marianne and about to deploy the next step in a multi-step operation based on that information, they should _not_ do that! Because you’re _not Marianne!_ ” He spoke very loudly, which was odd because he didn’t even look at me as he said it but instead whipped his head back and forth as if speaking to some invisible, fast-moving target. Or, perhaps, anyone who would listen.

“Those are all worthy points,” I shouted. I made sure to match his volume - Daddy had told me once that if someone spoke loudly that they may be hard of hearing and I should follow suit. “But they aren’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“That’s nice, _Not-Marianne!_ We should talk about this somewhere else, where _nobody_ can get _confused_ about _who you are!_ ”

“I think you should give up on Marianne!” I shouted as I step-double-stepped. “She’s very upset because of the things you did, and the way you treated her, and the sort of person you are!”

All at once, several things happened, all completely unrelated and in quick succession. Roland stepped to the side and behind him was Sunny. Sunny! He was holding something that was glowing purple, or at least that’s what it looked like, as it was immediately obscured by sparkling purple dust that emanated from the tip of the object. Sunny looked horrified and leapt forward, one arm raised, but I couldn’t see what he intended to reach for. For me? For Roland? Before the answer had made itself evident the dust struck me in the face - stung like anything, I dare say - and while my vision was obscured and I tried to wipe the stinging dust from my eyes, something struck me from behind, knocked me forward, a gentle breeze brushed my hair, and sound was immediately muffled. 

I opened my eyes, but everything was, well, not quite _pitch_ black, for if everything was _pitch_ black then pitch would have very little intrinsic value as a descriptor of darkness, but certainly much darker than anything had any right to be. I reached out in front of me, and my hand brushed rough fabric. I, or rather, the fabric surrounding me, was dragged along the floor. As the cloth was pulled before me, rough hands pushed me from behind.

“Am I in an Oversized Kidnapping Sack right now?” I demanded. I kicked backwards toward the pushing hands. I didn’t connect with anything, and got a rough shove for my efforts.

“Release my sister!” came Marianne’s voice. Oh good. I hoped she’d remembered my cotton candy. I heard the metal schwing of a sword being drawn, and then her scream, and a loud thud, which didn’t make any sort of sense. Her scream hadn’t sounded like her usual ‘ _I_ _’m going to unleash bloody retribution on my enemies_ ’ scream, it had sounded like her ‘ _I was just minding my own business when my very cute and darling younger sister unexpectedly hugged me from behind too forcefully and knocked me on my face_ ’ scream. I could tell the difference. I had heard both many times. But the thud that followed must have meant that she had knocked someone down, as Marianne was _far_ too good to ever be knocked down herself. Except by me, her very cute and darling younger sister.

There was a good deal of screaming from the various assembled elves, and Daddy was yelling something to his guards, all of which still made sense if Marianne was inflicting violence on whoever had stuffed me into this Oversized Kidnapping Sack. I hoped Daddy would remember to take me out of the sack before he lectured Marianne for fighting. 

“Our treaty has been broken,” came a new voice. It was a man’s voice, creepy, like bugs’ legs twitching into the air, and entirely too close comfort. “I will take back what I am _owed_.”

Sunny screamed, but his voice was quickly muffled. “Sunny!” I yelled, but someone shoved my sack again, so instead of yelling I waited quietly for Marianne to fix it.

“Where is the Potion?” asked the nightmare voice, and it was notable that he somehow _said_ the capital letter. It was obvious to anyone listening, even those who had no idea what was happening or why, such as myself, as was often the case, that this mystery voice did not refer to _a_ potion, nor even _that_ potion, but rather _The Potion_ , which was a remarkable bit of vocal control for a voice so deeply unpleasant in every other conceivable way.

“I don’t have it!” said Sunny, and he grunted, and I worried but said nothing. “The imp took it! I don’t have it!”

“Potion?” asked Marianne, who didn’t sound _nearly_ out of breath enough for the intense sword-work I had expected her to be doing. “Sunny, what were you _thinking_? How could you? Dawn-”

“Hello!” I said, and waved an arm up against the sack, and got shoved again.

“We trusted you!” shouted Marianne, which confused me, as I wasn’t sure who we had trusted, or who it was now that we _weren’t_ supposed to trust and why, but I figured she would explain it to me later. 

“It’s not like that!” yelled Sunny. “I didn’t- I wouldn’t- I thought she was _you!_ ”

“Enough!” said the new voice, and there was a _thwack_ on the ground next to me as if it had been struck very hard. “Take the prisoners back to the dungeons. We have a familiar to hunt.”

Marianne screamed again, but this time it _was_ her bloody retribution scream, and there was a thud of flesh hitting flesh and a gasp from those watching. The voice laughed - a horrible, crawly sound. 

“Fine then,” it said. “ _Decline_ my offer. But don’t come crawling to me when you realize how much danger you’re in.” 

The nightmare voice shouted, one horrible blast of sound. The floor next to me got _thwacked_ again, and suddenly the ground fell away as, I can only assume, my Oversized Kidnapping Sack was hoisted into the sky.

“Dawn!” Marianne screamed, but the sound was now coming from below me. “ _Dawn!”_

“I’m okay!” I yelled, and I wasn’t shoved this time, so I continued. “Come get me soon! Save me some cotton candy!”

There was no indication that she’d heard me. Soon the only sounds were the buzz of the creatures hauling me away, and the wind as it rushed by.

My sack didn’t have a suitably high thread count, and blasts of cold night air whistled in through tiny gaps in the fabric and chilled me very badly. I was dressed only in my formal white spring dress, which was suitable for spring, of course, but not for night flying, and I thought it awfully poor form of my captors not to have provided some sort of blanket or jacket or something.

“Dawn?” It was Sunny’s voice, muffled but clearly yelling.

“Sunny! You’re here too!” I was thrilled to hear his voice. On the one hand, it was unfortunate that he was trapped in this situation with me. On the other, more selfish hand, I was glad I didn’t have to go through this alone. On the third, mutant hand, Sunny’s presence was standard for Marianne’s Shenanigan Rescue Protocol, which meant she would probably come flying in to save us at any moment.

“I’m so sorry!” he said. I had to strain to hear him, and I suspected he must also be in a personal Kidnapping Sack. Though, being an elf, his wouldn’t need to be so gratuitously oversized as mine. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault!”

“Don’t be silly,” I yelled. “Even if you weren’t here, I’d have gotten kidnapped anyway. Or nearly eaten, or arrested, or some other thing, you know how this goes.”

“No, listen, that’s not what I-” his voice grew fainter, as I could only assume he was being carried farther away.

“Sunny?” I called, but there was no response.

It stayed like that for a dreadfully long time, though I couldn’t tell the time of night through the little pinprick holes in the Oversized Kidnapping Sack. At first the journey was a straight flight, but after a long while there were dips and dives and sharp turns that sent my sack reeling from side to side. I hugged my knees up to my chest and chattered my teeth, but there was no relief from the cold. 

Our flight slowed, and we descended. We flew in a straight line very low to the ground, and finally they dropped my sack onto hard, flat, _cold_ stone. 

Steps shifted around me, as if a great many creatures were shuffling up to surround me.

“I want to rip her wings off,” hissed one.

“I want the wishbone,” said another. 

Those were spooky things to hear, naturally. But I wasn’t too concerned. Daddy had told me that if I was ever taken prisoner, my captors would _say_ many scary things but _do_ very few of them, because I was ‘of political importance’ and ‘would be more useful for ransom’ and would be returned home relatively unharmed as long as I wasn’t too annoying and cooperated with my captors whenever possible. Instead of panicking, I waited very patiently for them to tell me to do something so that I could be cooperative. Or at least, until Marianne came to fetch me.

“No eating.” It was the horrible voice from before. Steps shifted away from me as the creatures backed off. “ _Brutus_ ,” came the voice again, and one more heavy set of footsteps backed away as well.

The top of the sack opened and was pulled down around me. I stood up, rubbed my eyes against the light, and I saw him.

For the first time in my life, _I understood perfectly._

He was the tallest man I’d ever seen, with skin like beautiful tree bark, and long thin limbs. I had never understood before now why some women cared so much about height, but I knew now. Height! Surely it was the most important feature any man could have, and I _knew_ that because _this_ man had it. I wished I could see him stand, to admire him in full effect. He sat, instead, on a throne of dried bones, and looked the very definition of power and poise. His face was thin and pointed, and his nose hooked down like the thorn of a rose. A thorn! How sad that I had never considered thorns beautiful before this moment! Thorns were brave defenders of beautiful things! His wings were flared out behind him, arranged over the arms of his throne. He had four wings, _four_ , oh how exquisite, and they were completely clear. 

I had always loved my own wings. I’d been praised for their beauty, their pretty pink, but oh, if I could change them to a beautiful crystal clear like his I would do so without another thought. 

“Fairy Princess,” he said, lowering himself in his throne and staring at me. At _me_ ! He knew who I was! “You are to be our prisoner, but you are not our enemy. You have not wronged my forest or my laws. I assure you, no harm will come to you while you stay in my castle. _Leave_ , however, and I _can’t guarantee your safety_.”

The horde of creatures that surrounded me, hideous goblins and things with dangling noses and twigs for legs, laughed evilly. As if they couldn’t wait for me to tempt fate and run away. But why would I ever want to leave if _he was here?_ He thought well of me! Or, at least, he didn’t think of me as his enemy. That was enough! I didn’t know how I would have lived if I’d known he thought badly of me. I would have lain down and waited for death. That was the only fate I could have borne if I thought he disliked me.

Oh and his voice… how could I have ever disliked his voice? He sounded like the earth, like the forest, like the creatures moving within the ground and the trees, building homes, spreading life, as if he was the foundation of existence itself.

I had to tell him how I felt. There was no other course for this pounding in my chest, for this feeling that must have been coming off me in waves. Of course he would already know. Everyone who saw him must love him as I did, but I couldn’t stay silent.

“You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” I said, “and I think I may be in love with you.”

The room fell silent. I cursed internally, as I was at once struck by the inadequacy of my confession. How could I convey the true depth of my feelings with something so feeble as _words?_  

Despite the insufficiency of my declaration, he seemed quite overcome. He gripped the arms of his throne with his long, perfect fingers, and his face betrayed such shock and confusion that I was certain I must be misreading it. Surely I was not the first to confess such a feeling. A man as utterly divine as this, surely he received such confessions twice daily?

I unfurled my wings, my stiff, cramped, _pink_ wings - oh, who could care for _pink_ and _pretty_ when true beauty was standing in the same room? - and floated to his throne. He stiffened, and snatched up his long, elegant staff, and pointed it at me. With his other arm, his other perfect, masculine arm, he gripped the back of the seat and pulled his leg up, as if he might leap off into the air at any moment.

Did he think I would attack him? How could I bear the thought of doing harm to such a lovely being? But wait, he had just kidnapped me. Ah, that would be it. Usually a person would be upset at the thought of being kidnapped, so he must’ve assumed I was displeased.  But kidnapping doesn’t often lead to meeting the most beautiful man in the world, so while being upset about kidnapping was a perfectly reasonable response in most cases, those feelings could never apply to my situation.

“I’m not upset that you kidnapped me,” I said. I stopped before the end of his staff, and raised my hands gently. I didn’t want to frighten the poor man, who had done absolutely nothing wrong. “I’m grateful. Please.”

“What.” he said, flat. He said it in just the way Marianne did. Oh, poor Marianne, I hoped she wouldn’t worry on my account! She must have thought I was suffering dreadfully. I only wished I could show her the paradise where I had suddenly found myself.

“I think the Oversized Kidnapping Sack was an excellent touch,” I said. I placed my hands at the end of his staff and gently pushed it down. “It was a wonderful idea and I liked it very much.”

“You _liked_ it?” he asked.

“Of course!” I said. It had brought me to _him_! If it had been built from poisonous spikes I would have loved it with all my heart! “But the material was rough,” I said, “and since you said yourself I’m not your enemy I really think you should have provided a blanket.”

“I- I-” he stuttered, and looked back at the horde confused, and back to me. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

Oh, how considerate he was! How willing to admit his faults! Not, of course, that he had any more worth admitting. He was beyond any shadow of a doubt the most perfect man to ever live.

I floated upward, and before could re-erect the barrier of his staff, I flitted to him, set myself in his lap, wrapped my arms around his chest, and pressed my head against his shoulder.

He flinched and threw his hands up as if he was afraid I might bite him. What had I done to frighten him so? Ah, but I couldn’t concern myself with such a harmless and easily resolved misunderstanding, not while I lived in the bliss of my cheek on his shoulder, and not while I had such urgent matters to rectify.

“Let me try again,” I said. “I love you, you _know_ I love you, but my earlier confession was only the tiniest little hint of my true feelings. To say the words ‘ _I_ _love you_ ’ could never be enough! You are divine! You are wonderful! I didn’t realize that there was beauty in the world until I saw you!”

“Oh no,” said the love of my life.

“I feel like my whole life up to this moment has just been a waste of space, and like I’m only really _alive_ now because you’re here.” I stroked his face tenderly, but he looked distressed. “But don’t worry! We’re together now! Everything’s better!”

“The Potion,” he mumbled, dragging a beautiful hand down his beautiful face.

“You have lovely eyes,” I said, and kissed his cheek.

He bolted upright, shoving me out of his lap. I only just caught myself before I hit the floor, and I floated beside him as I waited for him to speak.

“Lock this crazy creature in the dungeon!” he yelled to the hideous masses behind me.

Oh! He wanted to keep me! But still, I couldn’t help giggling. “You don’t have to _lock me up,_ darling sweetie lovey-dovey bear. I wouldn’t go anywhere you didn’t want me to.”

But the horrible creatures he commanded didn’t care for the obvious logic I presented. One atrocity grabbed my ankle and pulled me backward. I couldn’t stop floating or my face would hit the floor, but that also meant I couldn’t resist as I was pulled back, away from my love, and out of the throne room.

“Wait! Please wait! What's your name?” I yelled, but I received no answer. Had I done something wrong? Had I offended him? Oh, I hoped I hadn’t.

I was pulled in that manner for some time, and I tried to memorize the turns so that I could find him again as soon as I was free. Right, left, left, straight, right, left, straight, straight - but try as I might, this castle, my _true love’s castle,_ was a maze of dark tunnels and identical doors and in a matter of minutes I was hopelessly lost.

Finally we came to a massive room, somewhere low in the castle, with a massive staircase gently sloping to the side as it descended into the darkness. The room was not empty.

“Sunny!” I yelled, delighted. Sunny  huddled at the near edge of a massive cage that dangled from the ceiling. That would be cause for concern in ordinary circumstances, but my dearest love was in charge of this place, and if he wanted Sunny in a cage then there must have been a good reason for it.

“Dawn!” Sunny yelled back. “It’s okay! I’m gonna get us out of here! I have a plan, don’t worry!”

“Get us out?” I laughed, and nearly forgot to float, the concept was so outrageous. Luckily I managed to stay up, as the thing dragging me made no sign that he would slow, and these stairs were very long.“We don’t need to _leave_ . This is the most perfect place we could ever hope to be! Oh, Sunny, I’m in _love._ ”

“ _What?_ ”

“He’s the most perfect man I’ve ever seen. Just wait until you meet him, he’s _so_ _handsome_. A king! He’s perfect! I’ve never been so happy in my life. Oh, how could I _ever_ want to _leave?_ ”

Sunny’s face went white, as if I’d just told him that I’d died and he was secretly talking to a ghost. “Oh no,” he said, clutching the sides of his head. “No, no, no, no, no! Dawn, that’s the Love Potion! Oh, what have I done?”

I just laughed. It was classic Sunny to worry and blame himself even when there was no problem.

The ugly dragging creature hefted me into a private cell and shut the door behind me. I was alone. But that was all right. My _true love_ was nearby, and I was sure I’d be rescued soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not arguing that this chapter is 'good writing'  
> or 'good'  
> or even 'writing'  
> but this is the most fun I've ever had as a creator, Dawn is a delightful angel, and I wish I could use this whimsical tangential tone for everything


	9. Marianne 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter  
> Big plans for the next one  
> It'll probably be a while before it's up  
> Be patient tho it'll be worth it

I stared into the night sky, thoughts racing. Dawn. She had been stolen away right in front of us by that… I didn’t have words for him. He was unnatural. Or perhaps _too_ natural. The horrid place he ruled had burrowed its way into his skin - he looked like bugs and fungus ate away at him from the inside. Long, thin limbs like a harvestman spider waiting for a corpse. When I’d punched him, his skin felt like tree bark, dry and pliant. And when he’d caught my next jab...

I collected my sword from where it had been knocked away. I had been incapacitated so easily. There had been four of the hideous creatures, and they had come in an ambush, but still. It had been discomfiting to see my own weakness reflected so clearly. I needed to be stronger if I was going to protect Dawn.

But what did I need to protect her from? I mean, her kidnapper, right now. But beyond that?

I couldn’t process what had happened with Sunny. 

How could he do that? What had he been thinking? What on earth could have compelled him to do something so vile? Had he just confessed and been turned down? Dawn hadn’t said anything about it, hadn’t acted strange when she spoke about him. I couldn’t understand doing absolutely nothing for months, and then this sudden leap to brainwashing and treason. Had he even considered a middle ground? And what had he meant by ' _I_ _thought she was you’_? I wouldn’t delude myself and think that he had secretly been harboring feelings for me. His affection for Dawn was painfully obvious. So what sort of riddle was that? Or was it a desperate, ill-considered excuse?

I couldn’t ask him. He had been taken too, by the same hideous creature that had stolen my sister.

I tucked my sword into its proper place at my hip and leapt after them. 

“Hold it right there!” Something gripped my ankle and caught me midair. In an instant I had my sword back out. I dropped to the ground, rolled out of the grip and wheeled on them.

It was the king. I let out my breath and lowered my sword from his throat, but I didn’t put it away.

“You are not going anywhere, Marianne.” he said. “I forbid it.”

“I have to get Dawn back.”

 _This is my fault. I let her get captured_.

I didn’t say that out loud. I couldn’t bear to hear him try to dissuade me. I couldn’t bear to hear him _agree_.

“Dawn is not the only princess they were after. You will return to the palace and wait there until it is safe for you leave.” He turned to his personal guard - his _worthless personal guard_ , who stood by and did _nothing_ \- and raised a hand. “Escort Princess Marianne back to the palace and make sure she stays there. I need to go fix this.”

Two of the useless soldiers approached. They each grabbed one of my arms and frog-marched me away from the scene.

“Your majesty!” a voice came from a distance away. The soldiers stopped to look, which meant I got to as well. Roland pushed a leaf out of his way and stepped out from a hole in the brush. “I’ll save the princess.” He gestured behind him. “I was just fighting a dozen goblins, by the way.”

As much as I hated him, I was impressed by the audacity of such a bare-faced lie. Unfortunately, going by the look of admiration in my father’s eyes, I was the only one who realized it wasn’t true.

“Roland!” said the king. “Yes! Perfect! Please, go save my daughter.”

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. I was ignored, and the soldiers restarted their march.

“I’m going to need an army,” said Roland. “Fully outfitted, of course.”

“Of course. Anything to see my daughter safely home.”

 _Anything_ , my ass.

I flared my wings straight backward, out of the guards’ reach. It would be possible to bring them forward and smack my captors, but even with my strength training my wings wouldn’t be strong enough to incapacitate them.

Instead, I pounded downward and dragged myself into the air.

They planted their feet and didn’t let go of my arms. It was a struggle. I gave them a fight, but I wasn’t strong enough to lift both of them straight up. With my arms held in place, the upward momentum transferred to my lower body, and my legs kicked backward into the air. 

I floated above them, body level, arms secure.

I pounded my wings one more time, hard. As I rose up, both guards pulled downward.

I tucked my knees and let them drag my full body weight down onto them.

Both feet made contact with the guard on the right, and I smashed full force into the back of his knee. He crumpled, but didn’t let go. 

Right guard was on the floor, and left guard was pulled off balance. I pounded my wings again and lifted up, tucked my knees in close to my chest, and kicked hard at left guard. Both feet connected with the side of his head. His stupid ornamental helmet rang like a gong, and he let go as he stumbled back.

One down.

Before right guard regained his footing, I drew my sword with my free hand and struck down with the pommel. His helmet _cracked_. He collapsed fully and released my arm. 

I was free. 

More guards circled me.

I pulled myself into the air, unhindered this time. My sword was drawn, and I was ready for anyone that was stupid enough to get between me and Dawn.

Some guards drew their own swords and spread their wings, ready to leap after me. Others looked to the king, waiting for his signal.

I looked too.

He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t even look disappointed.

He looked _disgusted._

“Let her go,” he said, loud and enunciated. The guards lowered their swords, but didn’t put them away. I didn’t give them time to change their minds. I sheathed my sword and sped off toward the Dark Forest. The king looked away as I flew past him. That was fine. I didn’t need to look in his eyes to know I wouldn't be welcome back.

I flew east, with only stars and moonlight to guide me, until I reached the edge of the Dark Forest. I'd thought I'd understood its name before, but no. The space between the trees was pure black, as even the light of a full moon couldn't penetrate through to the forest floor. I had never been afraid of the dark, and I'd already survived the one excursion into this foreign hellscape. But somehow, that ominous blackness caught my heart and squeezed. I wasn't even _in_ the forest, and I had to struggle to breathe through my fear.

In that moment, I understood exactly what my father had planned.

If the Dark Forest didn’t kill me, the Bog King would.

If the Bog King didn’t kill me, Roland had an army on the way.

I’d come begging for forgiveness on bended knee, or I’d die in a nightmare land and they’d never find my body.

Either way, the king would have a more suitable heir.

I shook off the doubt and braced myself. I’d survived the Dark Forest once. How much harder could it be in the dark? If I could sword-fight blindfolded, I could survive the Dark Forest in low light. This would be nothing.

I gripped my sword, and I pushed into the darkness between the trees. At once I was overcome, barely able to see my hand in front of my face. I was sure the starlit field behind me glowed like a beacon. I didn't turn around to look.

I breathed and kept moving. I could do it. This would be fine. I'd survive the forest. I'd survive Roland's stupid army. I'd save Dawn and figure the out the rest later.

As for the Bog King? I already had a plan for him.

He’d had surprise on his side last time. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if y'all see any typos or have any critiques feel free to let me know  
> or don't  
> keep your writing secrets, see if I care  
> i don't  
> i totally don't  
> (i mean i totally do but i'm never gonna, like, SAY that)


	10. Sunny 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told y'all it'd be a while  
> i haven't updated this since last decade loooool  
> this joke will age well

This was the worst case scenario. No, this was worse than anything I could have imagined for a worst case scenario.

Dawn and I were trapped in cages in the Dark Forest. That was… bad.

At least our cells were pretty big? That was an upside. Dawn had her own private room with a closed door. I was in a massive cage suspended from the ceiling, so high above the stone floor that I couldn’t look down without feeling dizzy. I think it must have been built for a bigger creature than an elf. The bars were wide enough apart that I could walk through them if I wanted to. Of course, the only things that would get me would be several broken bones and possibly an early grave.

A plan worth considering, at this point.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I suspected this was deliberate on the part of the Bog King. The Dark Forest equivalent of tossing a prisoner a skein of rope and bribing the guard to look the other way. Considering the intricacies of the orb cell, I couldn't imagine the Dark Forest was at a loss for good cages.

But the worst of it wasn’t the cold metal, or the fear of being dashed down onto stone, or that the Bog King might come back at any moment and arrange some horrifying execution.

It wasn’t even the gentle white glow from the distant floor-hatch. The knowledge that Mirabelle Comfit’s empty prison sat nearby, that she was out in the world somewhere, wreaking mayhem, and it was all my fault.

No. The worst of it was the _screaming_. It had been nearly singing, at first. Ecstatic. From the moment her cell door closed, Dawn had screamed and shouted anything and everything for her dearest, darling, divine new true love.

And then, when no one came for her, she had turned to desperate screams. Yelling bargains into empty air. She’d be quiet if he came for her. She’d cooperate. She’d do whatever he wanted.

I wanted to vomit.

I couldn’t say how long we’d been down here, but it was long enough for her to get hoarse.

She kept screaming. 

The stones below looked more inviting with each moment.

It wasn’t the idea of her wanting someone else - how many times had I seen that? How many times had I _helped_? No. 

She didn’t care that the person she was enamored with had kidnapped her. She didn’t care that he was a monster. She didn’t care that he had known what had happened to her, he had known her feelings, and he had still locked her away. She didn’t care as her voice grew tired and cracked. She didn’t care, and screamed anyway, desperate for even the slightest scrap of attention from someone who couldn’t be bothered to remember she existed.

It was horrible. Nauseating. A sick, twisted reflection of love that went against everything Dawn had ever hoped for.

I had caused it. 

So we stayed together in the darkness and the noise.

The door to the dungeon opened. The Bog King descended, headed toward Dawn’s cell. I wanted to yell at him, scream not to go near her, but I couldn’t. Fear was a factor. Shame a stronger one.

Dawn, still screaming, didn’t hear him approach until he opened the outer door to her cell. 

She squealed at his arrival. Thorns barred her exit, but she ignored the pain and pressed herself against them as she reached out a hand for him. 

He was unmoved. He looked even more frightening now than when I had first seen him. Wings, clear and torn ragged, jutted out of his back. He approached her cell, stalked out from the shadows like a viper.

“You need to stop screaming. You’re upsetting my subjects and risking your health.”

Dawn giggled. “Why _hello_ there, handsome. Do you come here often? What’s your sign?”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“We’re trying to figure out an antidote. I _promise_ we’re trying to figure out an antidote. But in the meantime, _please stop._ ”

She stopped. Her mouth shut. She barely blinked.

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

“Oversized Kidnapping Sack,” she said, then shut her mouth tight again.

“I- That is, yes, technically correct. Do you understand why you were brought here?”

“So that I could meet you and fall in love and we can live happily ever after and have forty kids and-”

“No, no, stop that.”

She stopped.

“What do you know about the elf uprising in the Fairy Kingdom?”

 _That_ got my attention. I peeked my head through the bars and leaned over the edge. I couldn’t see the Bog King’s face, but he had sounded serious. An elf uprising? What had _happened_ in the past few hours?

Dawn shook her head.

The Bog King steepled his creepy stick fingers. “We have reason to believe that an elf, possibly part of an organized group, targeted you and your sister in an attempt to take over the kingdom. We’ve apprehended the ringleader, but we don’t know who he was working with.”

Oh no, wait, that wasn’t a new dramatic development, that was me. He was talking about me. This was _so_ much worse than the worst case scenario.

“That sounds spooky. Thank you for taking care of it for me.” Dawn smiled softly. “You’re so _nice,_ and so _capable,_ and-”

“Do you know what a Love Potion is?”

Dawn looked like she had to struggle to think of it.

“I think? Marianne was talking about them. Aren’t they super illegal and bad or something? I wasn’t paying attention.”

He sighed again.

“Love Potions are a kind of mind control. We think the elf revolutionary was going to force you to fall in love with him then usurp the throne. You _were_ affected, but you accidentally fell in love with me instead. Do you understand? What you’re feeling right now isn’t real, it’s caused by a Love Potion.”

Dawn shook her head. “No, this is real,” she said. “I can feel it. Marianne said Love Potions were bad, and this doesn’t feel bad, so it’s got to be real.”

The Bog King was silent for long moments. 

“How about this? If I give you an antidote for a Love Potion and you stop being in love with me-”

“Impossible!”

“ _If._ you stop being in love with me, then you'll return home and we’ll both be politely embarrassed about this for the rest of our lives. But if I give you an antidote _and it doesn’t work_ , then we’ll get married and live happily ever after. If you’re so confident, then-”

“And once we get married we’ll have forty kids?”

“I’m not promising that.”

“Deal!” Dawn shoved her arm through the jagged thorn bars. The Bog King flinched back, but when it became clear she was only after a handshake he accepted. Dawn didn’t let go. She reached through with her other hand and held on with both.

“I…” He gently extricated his hand from hers and took a step back. “I need time to arrange the antidote. Perhaps you’d like to rest? You must be _tired_ , after all that yelling.”

Dawn placed both hands over her heart and gave him a besotted look.

“You are _so considerate,_ ” she whispered.

“You take a nap. I’ll come back once the antidote is finished.” He turned to leave, but stopped when she called.

“Please tell your name?” she asked.

He took a step back, and struck a pose that might strike terror in a weaker man. Not me. Some other, much weaker man.

“I am The Bog King.”

“My Boggy Woggy Kingy Wingy!” crooned Dawn.

He visibly flinched. “Absolutely not.”

“Kingy Wingy?”

“Bog King.”

“Just Boggy Woggy then.”

He inhaled sharply through the nose. “Fine. That will be fine.”

Dawn beamed, then moved further into her cell, beyond where I could see her.

The Bog King closed her outer door.

“Good night,” he said softly, then stalked over to the glowing floor hatch. He took a moment to unlatch it, and I looked up from the sulking huddle I definitely wasn’t curled in. 

Mirabelle Comfit had escaped earlier, because of me. That cell was empty. What did he want down there? 

He reached one of his insectoid arms down below the floor, and pulled up the orb cell that had been her personal prison. Except, when I looked closely, I could see something buzzing around inside.

“Comfit. Did you do that on purpose?”

_She was still trapped oh thank the stars, thank every star at once, ohhhhh this was soooooo much better than the worst case scenario._

“Do _what_ on purpose, Boggy Woggy?” I had never imagined I could be so happy to hear that weird warble voice. Thank heavens Mirabelle Comfit was here.

“ _T_ _hat_. The ‘boggy woggy’ thing. Did you use the Love Potion to make her do that?”

“Oh Kingy Wingy, you know I lived with her when she was growing up, right? Is it so unbelievable that we might have similar speech patterns?”

“You did it on purpose.”

“Oh, I _absolutely_ did it on purpose. Simple modification on my pet name subprogram. All I had to do was-”

The Bog King shook her little cell. She yelled in protest. Did that hurt her?

“I need an antidote.” 

“Pfft. You really think I’d neutralize one of my groundbreaking creations? As if.”

He shook it again.

She yelled in protest. “ _I can’t!_ There’s nothing strong enough to neutralize it! No ingredient is strong enough to negate the primrose petals, and the petals themselves won’t work _against_ the potion, they’ll just amplify it.”

“Think of something!” he hissed. He spoke quietly and I had to strain to hear.

“There are two things,” I couldn’t see her from this distance, but I could hear chaotic smile in her voice. “The spell doesn’t affect children, or those who can’t feel romantic attraction in the first place. So, all I’d have to do would be to concoct a potion that can reverse the aging process-”

“No.”

“What do you mean? That’s a perfect solution!”

“I’m not an idiot, Comfit. I know you won’t make an antidote for that one either.”

“Hmph. Well then, we destroy the subject’s ability to feel love at all. That will clear up the-”

“ _No.”_ He gave the orb another hard shake. She yelped, and he stopped quickly.

“All right, all right. Have you told her to try, uhhh…. not _?”_

“What?”

“Has she tried just _not_ being affected? Has she tried the _just say no_ method on magical compulsion?”

He didn’t bother shaking the orb. He just gave her a flat look.

“You know Boggy Woggy, I bet if _you_ asked her she’d do it. Of course, as she fell _out_ of love with you she’d stop doing what you said and then fall back _in_ love with you, and then obey you again and stop obeying, ad infinatum.” The whirring blur of her form stilled as she considered this. “Actually, is there a way to harness that? That’s essentially a perpetual motion machine. Does it count as a perpetual motion machine if you have to feed it unrelated energy sources? It wouldn’t be any fun if my machine _starved_ while I was running tests.”

“Comfit.”

“Ugh. Fine. There’s _one more option_ . The same one that stopped you on _that fateful day_.”

He chucked the orb against the opposite wall. Mirabelle Comfit screamed as she struck, but no sound after.

The door opened again, and the sound of scampering feet as some horrible creature with a massive beak and ears ran into the room and straight to the Bog King.

“News, Majesty!” It yelled.

“Quiet,” he said. “What news?”

“There are reports of creatures getting,” the creature paused and grimaced. “...Love dusted. By the Imp.”

The Bog King grimaced.

“Bring them all here, and _find that creature_.”

The goblin skittered back out of the room, and the Bog King stalked over to the orb cell, picked it up, and leered into it.

“Did you hear that, Comfit? Your little pet is leaving a trail. If I were you I’d think _very_ hard about an antidote before he was caught.”

“I already gave you your options, Boggy Woggy Bear. Just because _you don’t listen_ -”

He put the orb cell back into its space below the floor and closed the hatch.

With that, he turned to stalk out of the room. Just as he reached the door, his head snapped around.

His eyes bored into mine.

I flinched and scrabbled back into the cage, heart pounding in my throat. The room was silent, aside from my panicked breath. 

After long moments, the door sounded shut. We were left alone in the dark again.

Dark, except for Mirabelle Comfit’s prison.

“Hey!” I didn’t dare shout, but I whispered it as loud as I could. There was no response. “ _Hey! Hey! It’s Sunny!”_

“Sunny?” Her voice was shockingly loud. She was smaller than my finger, where did she get all that air? “Sunny where are you?”

“I’m in a- _I’m in a cage! I can’t get out without falling!”_

There was a moment of silence.

“Land so you break your ankles! I want to hear what it sounds like!” 

Thank every star, thank every constellation that she was still locked up.

“ _I’m not going to do that.”_

“No, Sunny, I’m serious! I’ll heal you! I’ll totally heal you! Just fall!”

_“How are you going to heal me? With what?”_

“Imp can bring me herbs, it’ll be fine!”

What, her little creature would take it’s sweet time collecting ingredients while I layed there screaming with broken legs? I thunked my head against one of the metal bars.

But wait, maybe there was a plan there? If I could get out of this cage alive, Dawn and Mirabelle Comfit were _right there._ Sure, Dawn was brainwashed and Mirabelle Comfit was trapped in a little ball where she should stay until the end of time, but I’d made complex plans with less.

I peeked my head over the edge of the cage floor. That stone looked _really_ far away.

_"If I jump, can you actually heal me?”_

“I’ll need herbs for full healing, but you won’t be in pain. I just need to section off one _tiny_ itty bitty part of your brain and you’ll feel _fine._  I’ll even put it back once you’re fixed! But only if you promise to snap your legs extra loud!”

It was a terrible, terrible plan. I didn’t want Mirabelle Comfit anywhere near my brain, and I definitely didn’t want to break my legs to pay for the privilege.

But this was for Dawn. Mirabelle Comfit would never give the antidote to the Bog King, but maybe if I talked to her, Dawn could be cured. 

I said I would do anything for her. I’d already done worse.

I walked through the bars, closed my eyes, and threw myself off of the platform.

Panic seized me as I fell and _kept falling_. I was spinning in empty air, and-

My back hit first with a dull _crack_. The rest of me followed. All the air punched out of me. The pain seared through me. White hot and dull throbs together. I couldn’t make any noise but wheeze.

I layed there and gasped for air.

“Was that it? Did you jump? I barely heard a crack at all.”

I couldn’t get any air in. I couldn’t breathe. Oh stars, was I dying?

“Sunny? Sunny, can you hear me? I can’t do anything for you if you’re unconscious. More importantly, you can’t do anything for me. Don’t be unconscious.”

Through a completely dignified series of events, I figured out how to breathe again. I definitely didn’t sob out in pain and fear of my imminent death. I didn’t _then_ realize that I couldn’t breathe in because my lungs were full and I needed to breathe out first. That didn’t happen. That would be embarrassing. 

“Sunny. Sunny. Sunny. Sunny. Sunny. Answer me, I know you’re there. Sunny. Sunny. Don’t ignore me.”

 _“Shut up._ ” I wheezed, then pulled in another agonizing breath.

“Oh good, you’re fine. Come over here and I’ll carve up your brain for you.”

I tried to get up, but a burst of pain in my shoulders forced me back down. My vision blacked out, and I took several long breaths before it returned.

“I can’t get up.” I could barely force the air out. Were my lungs okay?

“Well _wriggle_ over here then. I can’t fix it if I can’t touch you.”

No better ideas. I wriggled. My back and shoulders were agony, but my legs were largely functional. At least my back wasn’t broken. I gently pushed and jiggled myself to the hatch. Eventually the texture beneath me changed. I was on top of it.

“I see you!” She sounded excited. “Stick your arm down here, don’t bother opening it!” 

I couldn’t process what she meant for a moment. Ah. The hatch wasn’t a full cover, it was a series of lashed beams with regular gaps. I let my arm fall behind me into one of the holes.

“You’re not close enough. Turn over and reach.”

I pushed down with one foot and rolled myself onto my stomach.

I bit back a scream. What came out was a gargle and lip full of blood. I tried to draw in another breath, but my chest pressed against the hatch. I couldn’t force any air into my lungs.

“Reach down here! I’ll fix it!”

My vision tunneled. I ignored my screaming shoulder and forced my arm down toward the glowing cell. 

I could just barely touch one fingertip through the web.

She seized it.

The pain lifted like a tomb door open. Before I could do anything more than gasp for air-

“Don’t move! You’re still injured, you just can’t feel it!”

I stayed down and luxuriated in the joy of being able to breathe.

“How?” I asked. “How are you-”

“You already know I’ve modified myself.” She gestured her free hand to her bizarre form. “Back when I was still working in the medical center I thought this would be a useful skill to have.” She hummed in approval. “You’ve got severe bruising, minor internal bleeding, two broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a concussion. Nice takeaway! You ought to jump off high things more often!”

“I’m not going to-”  I started, but my air gave out. It was strange, to feel no pain but be limited by my injuries. 

“Just take it easy. Imp will be here in a minute and then we’ll talk about payment for your healing potion.”

My whole body tensed. I couldn’t feel the pain, but I was overcome by a sense of physical wrongness. I tried to calm myself. “ _P_ _ayment_?”

“I can’t just give you a healing potion for free, silly billy.”

“Your payment,” I choked out, “was the joy of hearing me fall.”

She said nothing, but I could hear her raise an eyebrow.

“I cracked _two ribs_ for you.” I paused and took a deep breath. “You want to talk payment? _The ingratitude._ ”

“Oh, save your breath, it’s fine. It’s not like you have anything I really want. I’ll give you the potion and your payment will be that you don’t leave your corpse on top of my hatch.”

I breathed.

“Why were you in a cage anyway? What does Boggy Woggy want with you?”

“That’s uh…" I took in a deep breath. "He mistook me for a revolutionary.”

She snorted. 

“Listen,” I said, before she could make fun of me, “Did you mean that?” After just those few words, I had to break for air. “About the antidote. Is there really no way to cure it?”

She gave me a smug look. “She fell in love with the wrong person, didn’t she?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but I was interrupted.

There was a distant sound of claws scrabbling over old wood. The noise came closer. 

Claws landed on stone, and Imp gave a triumphant squeak.

I didn’t risk lifting my head, but I didn’t need to. I felt as he lay down next to me, and I saw his little paw as he dropped leaves and roots through the hatch. He never came close to touching the orb cell.

“Thank you Imp, darling. Mommy’s so proud! Sunny, I’ll have you fixed up in a second.”

I remembered the last potion I’d had her make. “Should I look away?”

“Hm? Oh, no, no trade secrets here. Any nitwit could figure this one out. Look all you want.”

I looked.

She kept one hand on my finger, just inside the orb cell. The other arm she gestured carelessly. The ingredients disintegrated and twisted, sectioned and measured themselves, then poured themselves into shape.

This potion was a thin, sky blue cylinder with a pointed end. In contrast with the Love Potion, the healing potion looked plain and functional. I remembered seeing others like it in the palace medical center.

Before I could wonder how I would get the potion out of the orb cell without moving, Mirabelle Comfit grabbed it and jammed the pointed end into my finger.

I yelped and pulled back.

There was no pain as I leapt up. I took a few experimental breaths. My lungs were back to normal.

“That’s amazing!” I blurted. Beneath me, Mirabelle Comfit snorted.

“One measly little healing potion is nothing. _That’s_ the amazing one.”

Now that I wasn’t face down in agony, I could get a look at Imp. He gestured his empty, dirty paws toward me, then smiled his jagged little teeth and shifted his tail. The end was wrapped tight around the Love Potion.

I flinched away.

Mirabelle Comfit cackled. I couldn’t see her through the hatch anymore. I could only see the glow of her prison.

“You have the Love Potion. Dawn’s right there. I don’t have an _antidote,_ but you can make sure she’s looking at the right person this time.”

“No!”

“Oh _come on._ Please? I want to see how it’ll go wrong.”

I shuddered. “I don’t want her like this! She’s not herself! She just listened to me hit the floor and almost die, and she didn’t even make a sound anything because the Bog King told her to be quiet.” 

Dawn’s silent cell door seconded my declaration.

“You didn’t nearly die,” said Mirabelle Comfit. “It was _one_ punctured lung, you big baby.”

“I was _wrong,_ okay? I never should have tried to force her. I’m sorry. Please, I just want Dawn back. Even if she never talks to me again, I just want her back to normal.”

“Ugh, enough with the moralizing. I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t fix it. Honestly, this sounds like a you problem.”

Stars, I wanted to shake her stupid little cell. 

Okay. Okay okay. I just needed to think of a plan. What did I have at my disposal?

I had: Mirabelle Comfit, who wanted freedom and chaos. Imp, who wanted whatever his mistress wanted. Dawn, who wanted the Bog King. The Love Potion, which probably didn’t want anything. And The Bog King, who wanted to stop Mirabelle, Imp, Dawn, and The Love Potion.

I was sure there was something there.

Maybe I could turn over Imp and the Love Potion to The Bog King? Beg for mercy?

That didn’t seem like it would work. Mirabelle Comfit would concoct some hideous revenge if I sacrificed her pet.

Maybe I could use the Love Potion on Mirabelle Comfit?

Oh, that _really_ didn’t seem like it would work. She’d made the potion, she’d modified herself before, so for all I knew she’d made herself immune. Good odds on Imp being immune too.

I could use the Love Potion on Dawn. Not because I wanted her in love with me, not like this, never like this. But if she would magically obey me, she would follow me out of this prison and we could escape. 

Escape to where, though? The fairy kingdom couldn’t help. And Dawn wasn’t in danger here.

What if I made The Bog King fall in love with me? That would definitely get me out of immediate danger. But then what? The Bog King was bigger and stronger than I was. If he was obsessed with me, he’d never let me leave the Dark Forest. I’d only be trading a small prison for a larger one.

This wasn’t working. I needed to think outside the box. _What did I have at my disposal?_

I had Dawn. I had her wings and our history and her value as a member of the royal family. Mirabelle Comfit. I had her intelligence, her sadism, her terrifying reputation. Imp. Nimble paws and devotion. The Bog King. Another terrifying reputation, and I had what he wanted. The Love Potion. A mind-altering substance with thousands of potential uses.

What could I do? 

Use the Love Potion en masse. Assemble an army. And then what?

Unleash Mirabelle Comfit and escape to the east. And then what?

Use the Love Potion on myself? _And then what?_

What was I even trying to accomplish?

I wanted Dawn back to normal. I wanted to undo the chaos I had let Mirabelle Comfit unleash on the world. I wanted to get out of this prison and go back home. I wanted everyone safe.

I’d have to be a genius to make _one_ of those things happen. _All_ of them would take nothing less than a miracle.

A miracle.

Or some _very_ good luck.

Oh. Oh, I was an _idiot._

I lifted the hatch and dropped down into the crawlspace that held the orb cell.  “Do you still have the other primrose petal from earlier?” I asked. “Or did you use it already?”

“I still have it,” she said. She crossed her arms and pouted. “I wanted to make something really fun with it, but Boggy Woggy recaptured me before I could find a suitable victim.”

I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. I had everything at my disposal. Mirabelle Comfit and a primrose petal. Miracles on demand.

“What do you know about Luck Potions?”

She gave me an appraising look. A smile crept up her cheeks. Monstrous, too wide, past what her face should have been able to hold.

“I know _everything_ about Luck Potions. I used to make them for people who upset me. It was my favorite pastime. Some poor sap would come to me, thinking I’d help him with all his horrible little plans - and they _were_ horrible. Nobody would bring me a primrose petal if they wanted something morally justifiable. Of course, you already know about that, don’t you Sunny?”

That… That was fair, actually. “What happened?”

She smirked. “They’d take the Luck Potion, thinking they were about to get away with murdering their colleagues, or burning down orphanages, or… starting a coup? _Hurting the royal family, Sunny?_ ”

I groaned. “Yes, I get it, I was wrong. ‘Enough with the moralizing,’ those are your words. _What happened?”_

She laughed. Delighted, cosmic bells.

“The formula for a Luck Potion is simple. Once you know what you’re doing, you can target it. Make it focus. Luck in money. Luck in battle. _Luck in love._ Once I figured out their goals, I’d give them a potion that worked _so well it’d break them.”_ She giggled. “They’d destroy everything they’d ever cared about with their own two hands. It made me so happy. It never took more than a few hours for their minds to go. And I got to _watch_ as their eyes went empty.” She sighed, contented. “Yes, I know _everything_ there is to know about Luck Potions. In fact,” she gave me a conspiratorial look, “the formula is so simple, I can splice elements of Luck Potions into _other_ types of potions. Isn’t that fun? Imagine a Love Potion that would _never miss._ Or...” Her smile grew manic. “Imagine a health potion that would only work ten percent of the time!” 

“Why would anyone want that?” I asked.

“No one would _want_ it. That’s the point. But imagine making enough to flood the regular supply line! Simple, textbook potions suddenly failing without explanation? Imagine the mass panic!”

Her smile dropped suddenly and she looked at me with furrowed brows. “Why do you want a Luck Potion? If you’re thinking about using it on dear Kingy Wingy, I hate to tell you, but that wouldn’t work out very well for us.”

“No, I want it for myself.”

Mirabelle Comfit was silent.

“I want to fix this. I want to help Dawn and undo all the mess I made. I don’t have any way to do that. But if I had a Luck Potion-”

“I don’t think that’ll work, Sunny.” The look she gave me wasn’t quite excitement, nor was it irritation. It was closer to thoughtful. “Do you know why I haven’t used a Luck Potion to escape already?”

I- Wait, that was a good point, actually. “Why haven’t you?”

“Luck Potions aren’t perfectly named. They don’t work with _luck_ , exactly, they work with _time._ Across all of the infinite possible timelines, you may marry a princess or become a brave knight, and a Luck Potion could make sure that that’s the timeline you’re in. But you’ll never sprout wings and fly. If I had an _improbable_ plan for getting out of here, then I could use the Luck Potion to bolster the odds of my success. But it won’t suddenly make a hole appear in the cell wall. Do you understand? If there’s no way to help Dawn, then taking a Luck Potion won’t invent one.”

I bit my lip. It had healed from my last bite. “But if there _is_ a way, _any_ way, a Luck Potion would let me find it, right?”

“Technically, yes, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.”

“Please. If there’s any chance I could help Dawn, I have to take it.”

She frowned. “That’s all well and good for you, but it’s hardly a reason for me to give up my primrose petal. What are you going to pay me?”

“Pay? I don’t… I mean, I don’t have anything else with me. I don’t have any more petals.”

She shrugged. “Then I don’t see why I should help.”

I racked my brain. “You’ll get to watch. You can have Imp follow me while I use the Luck Potion and he’ll tell you how I act and what I do. We can even carry your cell around if we have to.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Tempting, but nowhere near enough. Help me escape again.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Then too bad.”

I wanted to stamp my foot. There was at least a chance this could work. I needed her to cooperate.

“Okay, okay, hold on. If the Luck Potion works, and you can make it focus on specific things, then it should be easy to get you your payment, right? Give me the potion, I’ll use the magic luck powers to get you whatever you want, and I’ll bring it back to pay you later.”

She scoffed. “That’s assuming a lot. And even if you succeed, there’s no way you’d come back to pay me.”

“I’ll come back. Because if I don’t, I know you’ll find some way to get revenge. And I’m very scared of you so I don’t want that to happen.”

She gave a snort, and then a full belly laugh.

“All right. I’ll make you the Luck Potion on three conditions. First: Imp has to be safe. If he gets hurt at all, I’ll hold you responsible.”

“Deal.”

“Second: you have to make Boggy Woggy Bear regret ever locking me up like this. Make him _pay._ ”

Hm. That one would be easy. I was pretty sure the Bog King already regretted locking her up _like this_. He definitely regretted not giving her more guards.

“Deal.”

“And the third is my payment. You already said you won’t free me?”

“I won’t. Not since you tricked me last time.”

She pressed her hand against the orb cell and looked into my eyes. “Then I want unrestricted access to primrose petals for experimentation.”

I had an immediate gut deep sense of repulsion. But... If she was still trapped in her cell, it might not be so bad? There had to be a loophole in there. Besides, it wasn’t like I had a choice.

“Deal.” I said.

She clapped and giggled, then reached up and behind her crown and pulled out the folded petal.

“All right,” she said. “You know the drill. Look away.”

“Hold on, I’ve got my own conditions.” 

She looked at me expectantly and tucked the petal away.

“First. The priority needs to be undoing the damage I did. If there’s any chance of an antidote, that’s what the focus needs to be. Not you, not me, not more primrose petals. Dawn and the antidote.”

“Deal. That’s what I was going to do anyway.”

“Second. Nobody gets seriously hurt.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I mean it.”

“ _Come on!”_

_“I mean it.”_

“No, I mean, that’s not possible! I can’t stop everyone in the world from getting hurt all at once! Not with one potion! The terms can’t be nullified if some moron a mile away falls off his roof!”

I rolled my eyes. “Nobody gets seriously hurt _as a result of the Luck Potion.”_

“Oh. That’s fine, I guess. Kinda boring. How are you going to torture Boggy Bear if you can’t hurt him though?”

I sighed. “I don’t know yet. Maybe he’ll be tortured by the fact that he can’t stop your primrose experiments or something.”

She clapped her hands. “That works! I’ll take it. Deal.”

“Last, you have to promise that you aren’t secretly making this potion to psychologically break me. If that’s what you want you have to do it some other time.”

She considered. “Deal. If I want to hurt you I’ll just snap your ribs again. Now is that all?” She pulled the petal back out. “Shall I begin?”

I nodded and turned my back as she started her process. 

I couldn't see the orb cell, but lights flashed behind me. The opposite walls lit up green, then red, then flickered between the two. Then, with one final burst of gold, the light returned to its neutral state.  

I turned back around. Mirabelle Comfit waved a tiny green bottle up toward me. “You’ll have to reach in and grab it.”

I grimaced, then reached in my hand. Despite the displeasure of seeing my hand apparently severed as it went through the orb cell, I kept my eyes open. She pressed the bottle into my hand, then put her hands up and backed away. I pulled the bottle out.

The Luck Potion was a violent, sickly green, and much smaller than the Love Potion. It fit easily into one hand, and instead of a teardrop it was shaped like a circle. Clashing scarlet tendrils wrapped around it, patterned like a ladybug’s wings. A black cap jutted out in two directions, like antennae. 

“I dump this in my eyes?” I asked.

She snorted. “You drink it. It’s only going to be effective until moondown, so you’ll need to have it all wrapped up by then.”

“Moondown?” I balked. “That’s only a few hours!”

She nodded. “You said you didn’t want me to psychologically break you. It has a higher intensity, but it won’t last too long. There’s a chance you’ll still be sane at the end. _A chance._ ”

I blinked, nodded, and looked at the potion in my hand.

Was this really okay? There was a chance I wouldn’t be _me_ at the end of this. I might never see Dawn again. Did I really want to go through with it?

The potion’s black lid came off with a pop.

Of course. I’d do anything for Dawn. It was my fault she was here.

The potion, raised to my lips, smelled like sourgrass and cherries.

Even if I wasn’t around afterward, I had to do this. I didn’t need forgiveness. I didn’t deserve it. But I had to make it right.

Just one mouthful, and the jar was empty. 

The world burned green and red around the edges, bright and eye-searing. It tunneled in, pounding behind my eyes. I gasped as my sight was overcome completely by color, and force pushed in at the edges of my mind.

I had one last comforting thought as myself.

This was already the worst case scenario. I couldn’t make it any worse.

 

* * *

 

Sunny’s eyes pierced copper-fire green, and he dropped the bottle. It clinked to the ground, then disintegrated. 

“Hey Sunny, can you hear me?” I floated up and pressed my hand to the web. “Did it work?”

He said nothing. His eyes bored through me, glowing slightly in the dark room. 

“Yup, that worked.” It was nice to know I hadn’t lost my touch. I’d added modified luck formulas to other potions - recently even - but it had been a few years since I’d made a pure Luck Potion. Not that I’d been worried. 

Sunny said nothing. He didn’t move. He just stood.

That wasn’t a great sign.

“What’s the matter? No suitable course of action? Nothing to do?” I sighed. I’d told him that might happen. It was disappointing, but at least he’d probably be sane afterward. Sane enough to understand _I told you so._

What a stupid, half-cocked waste of my last primrose petal. Maybe Imp would be able to get me another next year. Or Sunny could get me something when he was halfway right-minded. This wasn’t the end of the world. Just disappointing.

There was a noise from the prison above. The sound of the door, apanicked yell, slapping wet frog feet over the floor.

Ah. Sunny’s empty cage made him think there’d been a prison break. He’d be checking on me in a moment.

Sunny moved forward, empty expression. He lifted the base of my prison and hoisted me upward.

 _Oh._ I smiled. This was about to get _interesting._

The hatch pulled up, and a slimy little goblin poked his head in, frantic. 

I let malice pour out of my smile and watched in glee as the creature went pale.

Sunny shoved me upward. The goblin jumped back, but it was too late. My cell caught him straight in the face, and in a flash of white light he was pulled into the cell with me.

It fell to the bottom of the orb, unable to float as I could. The goblin, only half my height in this space, looked at me looming over it and screamed.

Well _that_ wouldn’t do. I shot down next to him and grabbed at his wrist, letting old reflexes and modifications do their work. Disabled control of his breathing. Disabled pain receptors. Disabled muscle control in arms and legs.

I let him sit for a moment, watched his eyes go wide in panic as he realized he couldn’t breathe.

Sunny pushed my cell up out of the hatch, then climbed up himself, still silent.

As I felt the goblin’s panic mount, I forced air manually into his lungs, then closed his throat.

“If you scream, you won’t breathe at all. Understand?” 

It nodded, frantic.

I restored its control over its lungs. Of course, my power over it would stop the moment I let go, but _it_ didn’t know that. It sucked in air loudly, but didn’t scream.

Sunny placed my orb on the ground beside the hatch, and walked away.

“Sunny? You want to get this guy out of my cell? Sunny?” 

He didn’t answer. He walked through of the door that the goblin had left open and out into the castle. Annoying. But I supposed it wasn't  _his_ fault he was ignoring me.

“Imp!” The sound of claws on stone, and my darling boy’s face appeared near the cell wall. “Go follow Sunny. He’ll need your help. Even if he doesn’t, I want a full report of his behavior.”

Imp nodded and scampered away, out of the room.

On the downside, I was stuck holding on to this goblin for the foreseeable future. On the upside, it had been a long time since a Luck Potion brought me a scientific breakthrough. If I could take Sunny's behavior as a sign, there  _was_ a way to cure a Love Potion and I'd have the details by the end of the night. Finally, things were getting _interesting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the one hand, Sunny is immune to fall damage  
> On the other hand, I want to hurt Sunny  
> So the new canon is that he stepped into a wizard's circle off-screen and it temporarily negated his falldamage immunity, and then the healing potion didn't cure him it just reinstated his immunity.  
> there  
> that makes Perfect Sense
> 
> also we're OFFICIALLY off the movie track now hell yeah, Luck Potion ftw


	11. Bog 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some things never change

Things had already gone as bad as they could possibly go, but I had no doubt that they would invent some way to get worse.

The princess had finally stopped screaming and gone to sleep. I hoped she’d stay that way for a good long while. In the meantime, I was free to consider my next problem. _The Imp._

It had been Comfit’s familiar since long before I’d first seen her. She’d had it with her the first time she had come into my castle, offering her _services._ It fled when I’d had her apprehended, and no number of patrols seemed capable of capturing the beast. I could only imagine what manner of charms and potions Comfit had applied to the poor creature. Though, it being her familiar, the Imp was probably just as enthusiastic about such things as she was.

My patrols were bringing in the first victims of the Imp’s chaotic ministrations. Snails in love with mushrooms. Fairies in love with frogs. It was sickening. I ordered that they be locked in the dungeon, in separate cages. I couldn’t be sure what memory would be retained if- no, _when_ \- they were cured, but it would be better to deny these people the opportunity to humiliate themselves. No matter how it might distress them now, I was certain that any poor frog would rather not remember kissing a _fairy_ for hours on end. I did order that they should be given a clear line of sight to the object of their infatuation, when possible. That should do at least something to alleviate their distress.

I considered the problem at hand. I knew that fire would destroy the potion itself - I had tricked that information out of Comfit years ago - but needless to say the same method could not be used on its victims. Comfit wouldn’t tell me unless I had something to offer or something to threaten her with. I wasn’t willing to give her anything she wanted, and unless something changed soon, I couldn’t imagine that this hunt for the Imp would go any differently than the previous hundred attempts.

I leaned back against my throne and looked at my empty audience chamber. My subjects were out, rounding up the victims, hunting for the Imp, or being brought in as victims themselves. I knew some of them must lurk in the walls, that they would come if I called for them, but there was no need. I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling. The trunk of my castle extended upward, and through the skylight I could see the full moon at the peak of its journey across the night sky.

There was something in front of it.

I squinted. It looked like a bat, but it didn’t flit across the surface in the way that a bat should. I could see wings extended from a small body, but the entirety of its shape stayed in the light of the moon. As if it was flying forward. Straight toward me.

The skylight exploded. Glass rained down on me as the fairy attacker screamed her fury, sword drawn. I snatched my staff and whirled it in front of me, barely blocking the blow that would have gone through my head. 

We stayed locked like that for a few moments - it took all my force to hold her back as she pounded her violet wings down, throwing all of her weight into the attack.

I recognized her now. The darker princess. The one who had punched me in the face.

Great. Just what I needed. _Another_ screaming fairy princess.

Her feet touched down. I pushed her away and swung my staff, but she staggered to the side. In an instant she rounded my throne and thrust her sword toward my throat.

Her form was _perfect._

I managed to deflect it, but with her using the bone armrest as cover I couldn't return the attack. I tried to break out, away from the throne. She slashed toward me in an arc, stopping me short, and I barely blocked her swing. In less than a breath she returned to position and launched into two more thrusts, each just missing my chest to either side.

If she was used to sparring with other fairies, then she was used to broader targets. I suspected that was all that had kept me alive.

Before she could pull her arm back from the second thrust, I pushed off backwards and alighted on the ground with the throne between us. Without a pause she leapt from her cover, landed on the seat, and used the high ground to launch into another flurry of attacks. I ducked behind the ornamentation of the backrest. She jabbed through the larger gaps with her thin, fairy-made sword, a move that I could not retaliate against with my staff.

She was _good,_ and she knew it. 

Of course, I was hardly a novice myself.

She thrust forward and leaned further into the gap. Too far to pull back quickly. I struck at the base of her sword. I didn’t quite manage to knock it out of her hand, but it left me an opening. I pushed back out from behind the throne and flared my own wings, launching myself into the air and staying there, bidding her to come to me.

No matter how skilled she may be on the ground, a fairy’s wings could never outmaneuver mine. That didn’t bother her, and she flung herself after me.

Or at least, that’s what I’d thought. 

Instead of going for me, she shot to one of my hanging lights, grabbed the chain, and with the sheer power of a fairy’s wings sent it deadline toward me. I dodged out of the way and the thorned light crashed into the wall, sending cracks down to the floor.

This crazy creature had nearly clobbered me with my own chandelier.

“Impressive,” I said, and I meant it. But it was far from a game changer. I grabbed another light, and with the force of my smaller wings behind it, I launched it into a collision course with her. She sliced through the chain, and the light crashed to the floor. 

More cracks.

Now, with no more chandeliers to throw at each other, she came at me in earnest. Two more thrusts and a slash. But our midair fight gave me the advantage I'd thought it would. I dodged the first two and knocked the third away easily.

She realized the problem, and started to test it. Just out of reach she circled around me, checking for weaknesses. I rotated in spot, keeping her in sight.

She pushed herself higher, faster than I could with her powerful wings, then slammed down heavy blows. I could still block them, but she was learning fast. I controlled the lateral playing field, but with her strength she could control the vertical. 

“Had enough yet?” she asked. She blew hair from her eyes as she asked - I might have assumed she was distracted, but she slammed forward with another powerful attack. I had to throw my weight behind my staff to keep from being knocked out of the air. 

“I could do this all day,” I said breezily, and shot out from under her, dropped, made her chase me. I’d have to finish this soon. I let her come close, then stopped on a needle point and swung my staff back at her. 

Parry. Riposte. I was out of her range and the strike didn't land, but her movement looked as effortless as breathing. _What was this girl?_

“You know,” I said, feeling the need to clarify, despite the fun of our current engagement. I pulled back and placed my staff in front of me in a guard position, giving myself a moment’s respite. “The only reason I _took_ your sister was because of that damn Love Potion.”

“Oh sure,” she said. “Send a quick message, or arrange a kidnapping? Easy mistake to make.” She was clearly mocking me, but somehow there was no spite in it. She launched herself into another attack, and I predictably guarded.

“I had a good reason, if you’ll let me explain _.”_

She flipped backward, to a crevice in the wall, where she hacked at a piece of thick, dead bark, twice her size. Was this another chandelier trick? Before I could catch up with her, she separated it from the wall and launched it at me startlingly fast.

“Explain _this!_ ”

I dodged it by a hair’s breadth. It hit the ground, where it cracked the stone beneath it, shaking the foundation of the castle. 

All of this structural damage was going to add up.

More importantly, this new feature provided a new strategy, and I took it. I dropped to the ground nearby the hunk of deadwood, and the princess landed too. As I’d predicted, she landed atop the piece, using its height to her advantage, as she’d done with the throne. Unlike the throne, I could circle this new summit. She lunged. I stepped toward her side and brought my staff up level behind me. As she thrust forward, the tip of her sword was caught in the ornate end of my staff.

I could see the realization dawn on her face, and I smiled. With one sharp motion I flung my staff upward and sent her sword flying, then leveled it again, toward her. She was beaten.

She didn’t seem to think so. She grabbed my staff in both hands, pulled me forward, and roundhouse kicked me in the gut. I wheezed, half from pain, half from shock. I tried to swing at her, but she flipped over my blow and caught her sword midair.

I gulped for air. She leveled her sword at my throat. Something stirred inside me: competitive spirit, no doubt. The thrill of finally finding a worthy adversary. 

I knocked her sword away, and we fell into the rhythm of the fight. Dodges, ripostes, thrusts, and parries bled together. I started to tire - I knew she must be tiring too, but she kept pace with me. She tracked my movements perfectly. None of my feints fooled her, and she blocked my blows without looking. But while she kept me at bay, she couldn’t gain any ground. So much of her attention was set on her deft blocks that her attacks were obvious, leaving me free to block them in kind. 

We pulled away from each other and she laughed: a breathless, joyful sound. “Is that all you’ve got?” she asked, pointing her sword at me with an easy smile.

She was bluffing, of course. That reassurance didn’t stop the pounding of my heart. 

I launched into another attack. I was moving more slowly now, but so was she. We kept pace, slicing, falling, returning, as if we had been made to fight each other. There were times that she could have taken me, openings that I left just a little too long, but she refrained. There was a little extra flare in her handiwork now that hadn’t been at the start of our bout. A willingness to show off.

She was enjoying having a competent partner as much as I was.

I followed her lead, added an extra spin in my staff when I could. A delicate procedure, difficult, and purely for her benefit. But she responded in kind. She changed her form, raised her blade higher, flaunted a new style, a trickier one. I was familiar with it; it had historical significance as an art for nobility, but it had fallen out of favor for more practical styles. I couldn’t mirror it with a staff, but I played to these new rules and didn’t take advantage of the openings it left me.

“Your form is excellent,” I said between thrusts. 

“Funny,” she said. “I wish I could say the same to you.”

"What do you mean?”

She made a show of examining her fingernails on one hand as she continued to parry with the other. “I was expecting something… _more?_ ”

My brain tripped over itself, and all I could do was blink, too bewildered to think of a clever retort.

She dropped her applied style and went for a proper lunge, trying to take advantage of my moment of weakness. I went back on the attack myself, not giving her the opportunity.

She moved backward as I advanced on her. When we reached the wall, she didn’t let herself be pinned but stepped up onto it, treating the vertical surface as a new floor.

Vertical sparring. 

_Vertical sparring._

A world of training possibilities opened before me, and I stepped up after her, flapping carefully to keep my position level. 

She was a genius. This was pure artistry. And, as I realized quickly between the delicate flapping and the continued swordplay, there was no way I could keep this up. 

I pushed off the wall and landed beside the deadwood. Mostly landed. I managed to stay on my knees, and kept my staff in hand, but it took effort. I expected her to come down on my head as she’d initially intended. Instead, she thunked down in front of me, and after a moment’s struggle to stay on her feet, she collapsed to her knees as well.

We half-heartedly struggled to lift our weapons before we collapsed completely, gasping.

“That’s… haha… You are... very good at fighting,” she said. 

“Thank you… you too…” I gasped back. “Your technique… impeccable.” 

We layed there for several minutes, unable to move.

“Sister,” she said after a long silence. She pulled herself to a sitting position, groaning. “I need my sister.”

I groaned too, but stayed down. “I’m keeping her here,” I said. I wasn’t gasping between words now, but air was still in deficit. “She can’t leave. Needs an antidote.”

The princess wheezed, and got to her feet. I stayed down. If she wanted to kill me, she had earned it.

“Antidote,” she said. “Antidote for what?”

I looked up at her.

She had the too-big, predator eyes that all fairies had, and the same bright coloration that poisonous creatures used flaunt their toxicity. She was therefore, like all fairies, incredibly unsettling to look at. Ordinarily, I prided myself in the fact that I scared fairies more than they scared me. But right now, her too big, too bright eyes showed only concern and determination. Even with her sister on the line, even with my implication that she had been poisoned, this princess wasn’t scared of me at all. 

“Please tell me your name.”

She started a bit, not expecting that turn for the conversation. “Marianne,” she said. 

Marianne. My heart fluttered at the sound of her name. A fear response to the most formidable opponent I'd ever faced. 

“Very well. Follow me, I’ll lead you to your sister.”

I pulled myself to my feet, muscles protesting. She followed as I turned out of the room, leading her toward the dungeon. I noted that she made sure to keep her sword on her as we left. I worried for a moment that she might try to stab me in the back, but she came and walked by my side instead. I was certain that she had noticed the opportunity, so she was deliberately setting me at ease. 

My heart thrilled again. With the spirit of rivalry, of course. 

Together we made our way to the dungeon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so yeah, this is very nearly a shot-for-shot, plain ass /description/ of the actual scene from the movie  
> but like, let's be real  
> it's hard to improve on perfection  
> and this scene is pretty damn perfect
> 
>  
> 
> also you should leave me comments, that'd be pretty perfect too eyyyyy


End file.
